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”.
Henry Puna: What would a good deal look like?
The prime minister of the Cook Islands, Henry Puna, outlines his hopes for the UN climate talks in Paris.
Shifting tides
Developing countries such as the Cook Islands want the agreement in Paris to include the establishment of a formal body within the UN climate convention to advance a more comprehensive approach to human movements. In addition to migration across international borders, this could include internal migration to farms to cities as well as displacement resulting from natural disasters.
Kiribati: Before we drown we may die of thirst
Although rising seas, higher temperatures and shifting rainfall patterns could eventually render many areas uninhabitable, social scientists' work suggests that such projections are one of many factors that people consider when deciding whether and when to abandon their homelands in search of better opportunities.
“When you talk to people, they say migration isn’t good or bad — it’s just another way to manage their situation,” says Koko Warner, a development economist at the United Nations University in Bonn, Germany, who has canvassed residents in dozens of vulnerable countries since 2006. “Human mobility in all of its facets is something that all countries need to reckon with.”
In surveys of more than 6,800 people from the Pacific island countries of Kiribati, Nauru and Tuvalu, most residents said that they are already experiencing events such as saltwater intrusions, floods and droughts. Warner and her team found that people who have immigrated from these countries over the past decade generally did so to pursue work and educational opportunities.
But most of those interviewed said that migration will be necessary if environmental damages continue to mount. However, only 26% of the survey respondents believe that they have the resources they would need to migrate.