In this blog, Dr Saphia Fleury, now a Visiting Fellow at the Wilberforce Institute, introduces the two-year project she will lead on climate change and human migration, funded by a private donation.
Climate change threatens to displace tens of millions of people this century and is already contributing to the movement of people within and across borders worldwide. Without safeguards in place to protect their human rights, many environmental migrants lack legal protections or even the basic necessities to ensure their safety and survival while undertaking dangerous journeys and settling in new communities.
Environmental migration is not a new phenomenon. Humankind has always moved in response to environmental change; there is evidence for this from our first hominid ancestors onwards. As the global population has grown, natural disasters have displaced large communities, forcing people to seek shelter, safety and livelihoods elsewhere. Climate change represents the latest threat to human security, with its potential to multiply the devastation wrought by events such as hurricanes, flooding, droughts and even volcanic activity.
The project, which focuses on the small British Overseas Territory of Montserrat, builds on my PhD research at the Institute, which investigated the experiences of those who left Montserrat in the 1990s. The island faced an environmental crisis and social upheaval following a series of volcanic eruptions. As a result, two-thirds of Montserrat’s population migrated overseas, most to the UK.
The project has three strands. The first investigates enduring issues faced by the evacuees and maps the long-term implications of migration in the context of environmental change, from the perspective of realising the human rights of those displaced. To this end, I am keen to hear from people who left Montserrat for the UK between 1995 and 1999 (see contact details below).
The second strand considers the current risks to Montserrat from climate change and the adequacy of the response from the UK and Montserrat governments. I will use public policy engagement to raise awareness of climate change as a driver of migration both from Montserrat and globally, focusing particularly on the risks to people’s human rights when such migration is carried out in an irregular fashion. I will make recommendations to policy-makers on new rights-respecting approaches to immigration that match the realities of this new era of global migration.
In the final strand of the project, I will investigate the potential for future research and collaborations in this field, bringing together climate scholars, migration experts, human rights practitioners and policy-makers to affect real change on this urgent topic.
The Wilberforce Institute and University of Hull are grateful to the donors whose generosity has allowed us to run this project. Any questions or contributions regarding the research should be directed to Wilberforce Institute Visiting Fellow Dr Saphia Fleury, via saphia.fleury@hull.ac.uk
Lead image: Looking up towards the Soufrière Hills volcano, with pyroclastic flows in foreground and green growth in background. This image is by Patrick Hawks and is reproduced under a Creative Commons licence. See https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/03/Soufri%C3%A8re_Hills_volcano_in_Monserrat.jpg