Mapping the system to meet the challenges of our times
An invitation to help us shape a justice-centred framework for action
“Whilst immediate actions to adapt to the impacts of global temperature rises remain necessary, the focus on this alone risks only dealing with climate breakdown on a symptomatic level, and creating new industries of growth and extraction.”1
CIVIC SQUARE
Climate-linked migration is already happening - within and across borders - and will without doubt happen on a larger scale in the coming decades. Given that even best-case scenarios forecast significant further global heating, we must respond to these patterns while also taking action to mitigate against the inevitability of such devastating climatic shifts.
So what might these patterns of migration look like?
In response to these climatic shifts, many people move a short distance, within home countries or into neighbouring countries, just far enough to escape immediate peril. This is particularly the case during sudden on-set events such as flooding, with the intention of returning home if possible. Some people don’t move at all, either trapped in place or making impossible decisions at great risk to their own safety.
Other times, more complex migrations patterns are established, often in contexts where decent livelihoods and hope for a secure future are gradually diminishing. This is particularly the case for those experiencing slow on-set climate changes such as drought, desertification or sea level rises which can often also exacerbate conflict and loss of livelihoods2. Movement across borders, in these cases, are often attributed to a complex array of interconnected risks including climate, conflict, access to work or education, or put simply, the search for a better life.
Climate justice is migrant justice is racial justice
We support the right to stay as much as the right to move3, and stand in solidarity with those working to mitigate against climate change such that people are able to stay in their homelands and are not forcibly displaced.
We also recognise that movement in response to a changing environment is why humanity exists today. There are in fact long, historical precedents for this4. What’s more, in the UK, Britain’s colonial legacies continue to play out with many seeking sanctuary in a place with a shared heritage, language and family networks, despite the empire’s violent underpinnings5.
Yet, as more than a decade of a ‘hostile environment’ for migrants has shown, with its impacts surfacing clearly in the racist riots this summer, people seeking sanctuary have been made to feel unwelcome, unsafe and, in many cases, traumatised, in the UK.
At the same time, we also recognise the UK’s historical, disproportionate and ongoing role in contributing to global heating and see the welcoming of people seeking sanctuary as a form of reparative justice. In the wider context of a planet that has been deeply harmed by industrial economies, the effects are felt most acutely by racialised Majority World communities who played far less part in creating those harms.
We must “challenge the narratives that try to sanitise or whitewash the root causes of displacement”6
Migrant Rights Network
This is why we believe that climate justice, migrant justice and racial justice are irrevocably interconnected and can only be fully redressed when recognised as such.
Mapping the system to meet the challenges of our times
Our initial response and first step in thinking about this complex, nuanced set of interconnections has been to map out the ecosystem around us. That means much more than thinking about how the migration sector or the climate sector might respond. Climate-linked migration is a whole-of-society issue that need only be a crisis if we continue to accept hostile narratives, if we fail to tell different stories, and if we ignore the emerging practices of those demonstrating alternative ways of living in the 21st century through ecological housing and civic infrastructure. Fundamentally, we’ll need nothing less than the rebuilding of the social fabric of our country founded on principles of justice and equity.
“The truth is, no one of us can be free until everybody is free”
Maya Angelou
This initial process of systems mapping centres climate, migrant and racial justice, but has also brought other dimensions to the fore.
Migrant Justice: Establishing the right to move (or stay) for people living in climate-impacted environments.
Climate Justice: Reframing migration as adaptation not risk
Racial Justice: Challenging systemic racism that upholds inequitable responses to climate change and migration
Underpinned by:
Storytelling and Narrative Building: Understanding migration as a well-rehearsed adaptation strategy with collective benefits for us all
Citizen-Led Democracy: Deliberative democracy and demonstrating public support to influence policy
Civic Infrastructure: Anticipating and demonstrating new forms of civic and social infrastructure and ownership
Housing: Models for inclusive and accessible high-density / low carbon housing
Health: Equitable access to healthy environments
An Invitation to Shape A Systems Framework
Are we describing a conceptual framework, a network map, an organising concept? We aren’t sure yet what this moment requires, or what we might call what emerges, but we know that we are seeking to identify how we might collaborate across this system to put justice at the heart of society’s response to climate change and migration. Through an online event in January, we will be sharing this early stage framework and inviting you to help us shape it, enriching it and deepening it with your diverse perspectives.
We see microcosms of a more just future world in the here and now. We see our work as weaving connections between these pockets of hope, catalysing collaborations and unlocking new possibilities. In illustrating and spotlighting the different actors across our ecosystem, we offer the framework as a starting point to each understand our own role in building towards a different future that anticipates how people will move, prepares for it, and welcomes people who migrate in search of a better life as we navigate the impacts of climate change.
We warmly welcome you to join us for this online event on 20th January 1330-1500 (GMT). Get in touch with Julia for joining details. If you’re simply curious to hear more about this work, subscribe to get all the latest news in your inbox through our occasional blogs.
For more on the global context, see Climate Outreach report Resilience on the move: migration's powerful role in creating climate resilience
As articulated by the Climate Justice Coalition https://climatejustice.uk/migrantjustice/
This is widely understood and is well evidenced in Gaia’s Vince’s Nomad Century (Allen Lane, 2022)
See more on this at Refugee Action Asylum-In-The-UK-A-Front-Line-For-Racial-Justice-Briefing.pdf
Congo, colonialism and migration - Migrants' Rights Network