The Cook Islands' fate might depend on the United Nations climate summit in Paris this week. The low-lying Pacific Ocean nation is threatened by sea-level rise driven by global warming. But its Prime Minister Henry Puna fears that international action to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions won't be enough to help his country.
He wants the world to begin planning to help his people to migrate if they are overwhelmed by rising tides. “There needs to be more thought, more dialogue and more data,” says Puna — adding that money alone won’t solve the problem. “Can you put a dollar figure on a birthright, a nationhood, on sense of belonging? I suggest not.”
Nature special: 2015 Paris climate talks
Over the past several years, social scientists have helped to shine a light on populations around the world that are vulnerable to the effects of climate change. The notion of human 'mobility', be it the result of migration or displacement, is just one example of this social-science effort that is influencing the political debate at the Paris climate talks.
Media and government attention often focuses on dramatic estimates of millions of 'climate refugees' flowing across borders — and into legal limbo because the 1951 Refugee Convention does not recognize those displaced by environmental factors. But the draft agreement that negotiators are shaping in Paris refers more broadly to “climate change induced displacement, migration and planned relocation”.