Making the Important Urgent: Can climate migration light up the slow-burn politics of the climate emergency?

A bold and balanced paper by Adam Parr (University of Oxford).

Parr’s paper addresses the important issue of migration through the lens of climate security. After navigating relevant discussions and case studies, including the ‘securitisation of climate migration’, the role of agriculture in maintaining food security, and the Syrian Civil War, Parr’s conclusions constitute an effective call to action that is refreshingly practical and achievable.

The key elements of the paper:

• large-scale and international climate migration, including to Europe and the UK, should be treated by policymakers as a predictable consequence of the climate emergency;

• the presentation of climate migration as a security risk to the UK and its allies is a measured and reasonable assessment by military and intelligence organisations;

• climate migration (perhaps uniquely) is a frame in which the climate emergency might be upgraded politically from being ‘important’ to being ‘urgent;’

• the only way materially to reduce the risk of climate migration is to address its root causes – not its symptoms; and,

• the call to action must be designed pragmatically and not ideologically.

Link to paper here.