Think Change

Rising tides, shifting borders: Migration in a changing climate

ODI
Between 2008 and 2016, 21.5 million people a year were forcibly displaced from their homes by weather-related events, and the UNHCR predicts that globally, 1.2 billion people could be displaced by 2050 due to climate change.

This represents a hugely impactful but often overlooked consequence of climate change – one we are ill equipped to deal with.

With immigration expected to dominate the elections happening throughout 2024, today we are discussing how and why our changing climate is creating a new wave of migration and what this means for approaches to immigration policy and the rise of nativism.

Guests

  • Sara Pantuliano (host), Chief Executive, ODI
  • Gaia Vince, Environmental Journalist and Author of Nomad Century: How climate migration will reshape our world
  • Michai Robertson, Research Fellow, ODI
  • Claire Kumar, Senior Research Fellow, ODI Europe

Welcome to Think Change. I'm Sara Pantuliano. 

We are seeing an increase in the number of devastating disasters that are caused by weather events, all around the world.

This is a hugely impactful, but actually an often-overlooked consequence of climate change, and one that we're certainly ill-equipped to deal with. These disasters are causing large numbers of people to leave their homes.

We've actually seen cataclysmic projections by UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, that predicts that 1.2 billion people globally, could be displaced by 2050 as a result of climate change.

In reality, as we've argued in several studies at ODI, there are no rigorous global estimates of the number of people that are migrating in response to weather shocks or climate change.

And high-end projections of future climate related migrations are not considered credible.

But while the more catastrophic projections may be unreliable, we can't deny that many people have to move because of the climate emergency. And immigration is expected to dominate this record year of elections.

So today we want to discuss how and why our changing climate is creating a new wave of migration and what this means for approaches to immigration policy and the rise of ‘nativism’ in particular.

But I don't want to forget the other side of the story. There is also a story of opportunity that is always overlooked.

Migrant workers can actually help deliver net zero transitions. And indeed, they may be critical in countries with labour shortages. I'm going to start our conversation with Michai Robertson.

Michai is a research fellow in the climate and sustainability team here at ODI. But, Michai, in addition to being a research fellow here, you also act as the senior advisor for the Alliance of Small Island States, EOSIS.

So can you tell us a bit about how climate change is impacting small island states, and how much of a concern is forced displacement becoming in this environment?

So small island developing states actually, on this topic, especially linked to the sea level rise associated with climate change. Since the start of international discussions on it in the in the nineties, they have been raising alarms around, around this issue, and they've been the, the sort of canary in the coal mine.

Right? To use that that ironic term with climate change. And so a lot of the issues that that we face, has has been put on the top of the national agenda, especially on like Atoll nations.  

So nations that are have atolls in them and are really susceptible to sea level rise, like the Marshall Islands, in the Pacific, as well as Tuvalu, have really highlighted the importance of this issue and addressing this issue in a coordinated manner and having support on it.

But as well, noting that there are some that are already doing great work in this space like Fiji, again, in the Pacific who actually have a trust fund that deals with relocation.

And they created this legislation-based trust fund in order to raise money and capital to do planned relocation in different areas. So this has been on the top of the agenda of small island developing states because it's crucial to not only their lives, but their way of life. 

Yeah. Well, let me bring in my other guest.

I have with me today, Gaia Vince. Gaia is a science and environmental journalist. She's also the author of Nomad Century, How to Survive the Climate Upheaval

And Claire Kumar, who is a senior research fellow in ODI Europe in Brussels.

Gaia, you've said that while climate change is finally getting the attention it needs, mass migration as a result of the climate impacts is still largely underreported, underdiscussed. 

Why do you think that is? And do journalists have a responsibility to build awareness?  

So, in terms of, in terms of climate change and migration, I mean migration has mainly been the study field of social scientists, people working in disaster relief, NGOs, and people studying demographic change in, in that way, and most people in that field, while they, while they understand that climate change is going to have an impact and is already having an impact, there is this, there is this feeling that it is just a small add on to what is largely driven by conflict or, or other disasters and that climate change will just have a sort of incremental effect and many of these researchers kind of look back at what has gone before and just extrapolate into, into the future. 

Whereas if you talk to climate scientists, they are seeing a very different system with the Earth systems, a very different situation where we are seeing step changes in what is to come, tipping points, could be passed, where the liveability of certain areas is going to dramatically change because we are going to get an increase in the number, the frequency, and the severity of extreme, events, and what’s happened is these two, these two fields haven't overlapped enough in my experience, so there isn't this appreciation of how this will affect human mobility going forward, how this will affect the distribution of people, of capital, of everything, of agriculture, as the decades progress and as the temperature heats up. And, you know, so far most climate migration, first of all, isn't described as climate migration. It will be classed as economic migration or urban migration and it's mostly within borders. So people are displaced and they end up in cities, on the outskirts of cities in a similar way to people moving for, you know, other economic reasons.

But climate is playing already a huge role in a lot of these migrations, and as we move forward through the decades, as our, you know, we've already passed a year above 1.5

on average, global average temperature above the preindustrial average. We passed that, a month ago.

You know, the temperature is going to rise and we are going to see many more of these extreme events and people are going to be displaced multiply, as they are in some countries already, inside nations, but increasingly also across borders, across regions, across continents, and I don't think there has been enough of an understanding about this and also enough honesty from, from leaders about what climate change really means to liveability and the migration that is already underway and is to some degree inevitable. What that means to, you know, city populations, to planning, to, infrastructure decisions, to food transport, to everything. 

You’re a journalist. Don’t journalists have a responsibility to build awareness, you know, about what you're describing clearly as a very serious, you know, unfolding crisis?

Yes. And journalists – well, I mean, I've been talking about I've written a whole book about it, but it's true. I mean, it hasn't you know, there has been, there have been articles and there have been things written about climate migration.

I don't think the media is particularly the problem here. I think it is leadership and I think it is, it is an understanding, an honest understanding of where we are with this issue.

You know, when we look at, how the Conference of the Parties, the COP process that looks at climate change, they don't discuss climate migration. You know, this is, this is something.

Climate change is something that is affecting humans and where they live, and it really is something that should be, right? fundamental in how we go forward in planning everything from decarbonisation to building green industry.

You know, where are we going to put these things? How are we going to, how are we going to manage a situation where places become more and more unliveable, as we've already seen, across the world just in the last few years.

Claire, Gaia says very clearly, you know, we have a problem of leadership, and we see how how many political leaders already stigmatise refugees and migrants, you know, before we even get, you know, to climate mobility.

You study, public attitudes to migrations. What effect do you think this surge in climate displacement will have on public attitudes, especially given, you know, the general rhetoric that we see from politicians around this?

Definitely, I think we're in a very difficult position right now. And as, you know, Gaia has raised, I think the urgency of the question of climate mobility, also the question of decarbonisation, the leadership we have, all of these things are incredibly, you know, negative panorama.

And I just wanna break down a few things. I mean, you've raised both public attitudes and the sort of hostile rhetoric in your question, and I think we need to sort of separate the two a bit.

We're very aware in our research on public attitudes that, actually, public attitudes around immigration are increasingly positive.

And at the same time, of course, what we hear publicly from our leaders is very hostile rhetoric in many countries.

And those two things actually, are really diverging, and I think that is a very interesting scenario, you know, to be faced with.

It's also, it gives me so much hope, actually, that our leaders are much- you know, we're not as xenophobic as our leaders. it's really something that we don't hear enough, I think.

No. Definitely. And this is something in our research we're constantly trying to put forward to give our policy community and our researchers the confidence to kind of stand up and say, actually, this isn't how the public feel.

And I think when you talk about things like the surge of people that will come and the displacement and then you contrast that to the narratives, I mean, this is where you could get very, very concerned if you focused only on the narrative question.

And, you know, I actually do think that we know what will happen. You know, history has told us, for example, what Europe will do. You know, think back to 2015 to the refugee- the so-called refugee crisis in Europe.

That was our supposed surge, and I really do put those- 

-A crisis in our eyes, of course. You know? 

Exactly. You know, I, I put this in quotes, you know, very advisedly.

The numbers at that point in 2015 were about 1.2 million, sorry, 1.2 million asylum seekers, and we frame that as a crisis. Now I think this is fairly hysterical. If you think about the population of the European Union, it's 750 million.

So, you know, this is a drop in the ocean. And, of course, Europe receives very few refugees if you think about the global distribution. And, of course, we're wealthy countries.

We have well-resourced asylum systems. We can receive people. So there's all of this, you know, this problem is there. And, of course, last year we had about a million asylum seekers. So, again, the crisis narrative is ramping up again.

And I think, as everybody knows, Europe's response has been to focus on deterrence and pushbacks and, actually, I think Europe has created a genuine humanitarian crisis on its borders because of this.

So rather than have an orderly asylum system or reception system, you know, we've taken this route.

And one thing I'd like to contrast to, I know this is taking this out of the climate moment, but if you look at what happened with Ukraine, that was a real surge. That was a genuine surge. And what happened there was really interesting.

Over 8 million people arriving in the European Union. And what happened? We didn't have a crisis narrative. We had a solidarity narrative. And so that changed everything. So we put in place the temporary protection directive.

We had legal protections, legal status, right to work. Totally transformed that into a much more positive situation. And it is essentially the gold standard of what we could do and how we can do things differently.

And I think just to get back to the attitudes point, which is important, of course, the places we study, there are differences, but we do increasingly see these positive attitudes to immigration across a whole range of survey questions and measures.

But we also see it at the same time as the narratives are getting more hostile.

So, if you look at the UK, which is probably the emblematic example, you'll see an incredibly consistent positive trend. Same in the Netherlands. Same in Poland. You know, we could go through Europe and kind of compare and contrast.

So, my main point here is that please don't think that the public is the problem. The public is not the problem. The narratives by our leaders are the highly problematic kind of area here.

So, if public opinion is your guide in terms of how concerned should we be about a surge, I would say, actually, there's lots of space for sensible, compassionate policy making in this area.

You say something very important, Claire. You know, the majority of this displacement actually happens, within and across, you know, low and-middle income countries.

And, you know, we've heard Barbados’ Prime Minister Mia Mottley speak extensively about the need to ramp up support for these countries that bear the brunt of this increased mobility.

Michai, how is this issue of internal and cross border displacement dealt with by the SIDS and what can international partners do?

Yeah. And thanks. So that's a really good question. And I think I wanna provide a practical example, actually from where I'm from.

And I actually did live through that experience. So it was in 2017 when we had hurricane Irma, which was that category five hurricane. And Antigua, for persons who don't know, Antigua is a Caribbean Island. It's an anthropologic state, so it has multiple islands, but it has two main inhabited islands. Antigua is the main one with the majority of the population, and then Barbuda is a smaller one with a small percent of the population. And then there's one uninhabited island. 

And so looking at that, you had landfall of this huge hurricane. They called it super hurricane category five plus-plus, and it made landfall on Barbuda. And what happened was that it was 95%. 95% of all the structures on Barbuda was completely decimated and destroyed. So this was on September 5th. What then happened, after that was that another hurricane was approaching, so hurricane Jose.

And that was 3 days after. And 3 days after, essentially, the government had to make a decision to essentially ask- so it actually wasn't even asking. It was, it was a state of emergency. So they required the Barbudans to leave their home and pack up and come to Antigua.

And I guess you could also imagine if- cause- the way that hurricane died, it slightly missed Antigua and it, and it went and hit Barbuda. But could you imagine if it was the reverse? If the capital was completely decimated?

Right? And then where would, you know, where would anyone be able to go? Right? And so you had that, that, that clear example where the government then had to essentially deal with, for example, dealing with temporary housing.

So there was an appeal to Antiguan's, to potentially open up their homes to Barbudans, as they try to as well quickly repurpose an old hotel to have as temporary shelter.

There was also discussion on finding food and relief supplies, you know, sanitary products for, for women and girls, things like that.

There was also a discussion on figuring out spaces in schools, right? Because this is in September, the heart of the hurricane season is in September.

And they were trying to figure out how exactly they would, fit, you know, Barbudans and, and put them and Barbudan children, put them into the school system over in Antigua.

Other things like healthcare and then figuring out how, how do you, how do you deal with reconstruction and rehabilitation?

But all that to say that even in those three days when the government required it, there were huge immobility problems. Right? Because Barbudans didn't want to leave. It's their home and they're, they're very much a local community connected to their land.

And so, so there was huge, huge kind of like back and forth in, you what's the responsibility of the state, right, in a situation like that? And all that said and done, we got most of the Barbudans they came over to Antigua.

However, I would say about 10 days after, hurricane Maria hit Dominica, which completely decimated Dominica. I think it was about 220% of its gross domestic product of, you know, of its income was absolutely wiped out.

Right? And so, looking at the stats, afterwards as well, the migration coming out of Dominica was actually a fifth of their entire population.

Noting that it's a small population but, you know, in the end it really doesn't matter because it's about, an entire country of people, self, self-determined people. And you know, and a fifth of your entire population had to migrate.

And just to let you know that Antigua and Barbuda, also because they were part of a community, similar to the EU, an organisation of the Eastern Caribbean States, they have free movement of people.

And so, Antigua actually took about, I would say, I think it was 1,600 Dominicans in after Maria's part of that total.

-And what’s happened to these to people long term? 

So interestingly enough I can say anecdotally, that some of them ended up in the government.

And cause I used to work in the government, I ended up working with these individuals, highly skilled individuals that have had to migrate because of- and so different, different aspects of Antiguan society, they integrated into it.

And mind you, historically, these sort of events like, well non-climatic events like the volcanoes, for example, you know, they do sort of have these sort of issues where you have this cross migration.

But because of climate change and because of that scenario where it was back-to-back-to-back, and because science is saying that more intense and more frequent, you know, tropical cyclones and other climatic events are coming.

-Which we are seeing, yes.

Exactly. You know, this, you know, could we have these sorts of back-to-back events where we have hurricane seasons every, every single year happening, year after year?

I don't think our systems can do it without the necessary coordination and support that is needed from the international community on this. 

Gaia, in Nomad Century, you actually argue that migration is not the problem but it's the solution to the climate crisis, you know, that, that rather than restricting movement by sealing borders and building walls, we need to promote movement, actually, something with which I agree very much.

But can you elaborate on this from your perspective? 

Yeah.

Well, you know, as we just heard, it was migration that saved people in Barbuda and in, you know, and, and people who were left destitute in Dominica, who could then find new opportunity, new ways to move on with their lives and, and that's what humans have always done, right?

We've used migration as a tool to move from, you know, our relatively small population that emerged in Africa to now be distributed across the globe and, you know, to, to meet different groups of people from different places, to build these incredible cities where you get a fusion of ideas, of innovation, of foods, music and all types of culture and that's really, you know, brings the secret of our human success to life.

I mean, it really is, it really is what we owe our, our success as a species to, that great movement of people, that really important adaptation that we have that is built on network forming and cooperation between different people where we share expertise, we share resources in different ways.

The problem is we live in these very, very unequal societies and one of my, you know, one one of my messages, I guess, is that, you know, the problem is not people moving, it's the problem, the problem is people who, who won't move or don't want to move because, actually, when you are in a vulnerable position and, and as we've just heard, we're going to see a lot more of these back-to-back, cascade effects, so not just, you know, multiple, severe hurricanes hitting, an area one after the other where you cannot build the resilience from one disaster before the next one hits, but we're seeing other things like, just a couple of years ago in Pakistan, you know, months and months of intense heat with temperatures around 50 degrees, you know, unbearable heat, terrible drought that hit agriculture, and then that was followed by unbelievable flash floods that made 33 million people displaced in just one week, you know. And, and those flash floods were then followed by landslides, by, agriculture washed away, infrastructure washed away so people couldn't repair and, and reconstruct and rescue people because the bridge had gone and the road's gone and all, you know, there's no electricity.

These situations, these back-to-back cascading, things, what makes places really unliveable and displace enormous numbers of people, many of whom, you know, end up living in really undesirable kind of camps rather than, rather than being, sort of incorporated and included in new cities and with homes and jobs and all of that, you know, they're stuck.

And so people don't want to move. They don't want, you know, we are so completely dependent on each other.  

We're, we're social humans. We're social beings, social creatures. We cannot live alone. None of us really, genuinely, is an island. We, we even need, to rely on complete strangers to give birth, right? We can't even give birth alone.

So, so we are utterly dependent on our network, on our social network, for everything, on our society, and so moving away from that safety, that security net where there's someone who can look after your kids when you go to work or have a problem, someone can look after your elderly parents where you know the language, where you understand how the bureaucracy works and, you can get a job or you have a job or you have some form of security.

Perhaps the only sort of financial security you have is your land or your house. 

To move away from that to somewhere else where you are a stranger, where you don't speak the language, where you may be prejudiced against because of the color of your skin or because of what the clothes you're wearing or the religion you're following or whatever, where you don't know anyone, where, where you don't have that safety net, you don't have that network, is really, really difficult.

It's a really difficult task and it requires enormous amounts of trust in the institutions telling you that you should move for your own safety, trust that you will have somewhere, you know, that is better than the terrible risk you face staying somewhere, and that trust is not available in a lot of places.  

And I’m not just talking about desperate people in villages in Bangladesh, I’m talking about the richest country in the world, in the United States, who don't move when there's an evacuation order because, you know, they don't have that trust in the, in the institutions and they think that if they leave their house it will be robbed or someone will, you know, come and buy that land when it's, when it's marked, you know, unliveable.

And this is something that we should be talking about, and we should have strategies to cope with.

We should have ways to help people to assist and enable them to move away from danger, to find safety, and we're not doing enough about that because at the moment we risk the wealthy people being able to move to new places quite easily where they can afford to live in safety somewhere else. People who have, you know, professionally desired qualifications or jobs, they can move, but the poorest and most vulnerable, the ones most at risk, are the ones that that can't move and they risk really being left behind in danger and we're already seeing that, across the world when disasters hit.

Yeah. You hit on a very important point, but it is really difficult, you know, for people.

As you say, people don't particularly want to move, and then they're even more reluctant to move because they are faced with attitudes and rhetoric that are really distressing.

And we see, you know, here in the UK how the government has villainised migrants, has invoked an increasingly ‘nativist’ stance on, on immigration.

And, and this obviously feeds a negative, approach, you know, a negative attitude towards climate mobility.

In fact, I think it can also hinder the UK's own ambition around the green transition ironically because we have chronic labour shortages and actually we do need migrants that can help us, you know, move forward with the green transition.

Claire, that's something you've done quite a bit of work on. What are your reflections? 

Yes. I mean, definitely, the UK rhetoric, as you say, I do think is a critical barrier that will hinder the green transition in the UK.

This is not an angle we talk about very much. But if you just think across, you know, what you hear in the media, even just on the multiple industries in the UK that have shortages.

You know, we could do a long list here if we had time, but, but one thing that is quite interesting is that there are certain workforces, and construction is one of them, and that's a very critical workforce for the green transition.

It has particularly suffered from vacancies and the problem of Brexit because they lost a lot of their EU workers. They didn't get replaced, similar to transport and hospitality.

You know, there are certain sectors of the UK economy that have really particularly suffered. So if you look at this from a climate lens, then actually there is quite a lot to be concerned about.

And our research has shown, you know, we looked at, for example, a lot of the forecast being done by the UK Climate Change Committee, and they're looking at, you know, really significant numbers, about 750,000 new jobs created by 2030 that workers need to fill.

We looked particularly at one sliver of that, which was retrofitting. So every residential and commercial building in the UK will need retrofitting. We have to exponentially grow that industry and we haven't really made any progress.

You know, there is no urgency around it. In fact, there's a lot of backtracking in this area. But if you look at the numbers needed for retrofitting, you are absolutely in a sphere that is much greater than the NHS shortage.

It's greater than what's needed for adult social care and other sector in dire need in the UK. And that's just retrofitting alone. So, we're not talking about all the other areas of the net zero transition.

So, one of the proposals we made is that actually, the UK needs a net zero workforce visa, so like a special visa category. And putting it on a par with health and social care for sure.

That's definitely something we think is needed and that enables you to, of course, think about how can you make that visa category more attractive, can reduce fees, and, you know, essentially getting more workers in under this category.

So we're definitely calling for purposeful action around here.

There's lots of questions around skills gaps, you know. You have to remember these are new green technologies, solar PV, heat pumps. We need upskilling for our domestic workforce as well as for migrant workers of course.

So there are countries like Germany that are looking at this and putting in place bilateral mobility partnerships and different agreements with other countries with India, Colombia  for example.

And the UK is not, right now, taking that purposeful action even though we have a really difficult tight labour market and a lot of problems in front of us.

And I think one of this the, you know, one of the key things is coming back to narrative again because we have such poor hostile rhetoric, such immature approaches to immigration policy, we can't have a pragmatic, constructive discussion about what kind of immigration policy we need to help our net zero transition.

And we are a million miles away from a sensible discussion about aspects of climate adaptation and displacement and humanitarian visas that might be offered to confront some of the situations that Michai and Gaia were talking about, you know, we're even further away from that kind of sensible conversation I think. 

I would 100% agree with that. 

And we’ve also got to think about it from the migrant perspective, right? If you’ve got a choice of which country to migrate to, are you going to pick a country where you're being told the whole time you're not you're not welcome and you're a problem, and, you can't bring your family and there are all sorts you know, are you going to see that as a future that you want to invest in as, as, you know, you want to invest in that society?

You want your children to grow up and become citizens and, you know, create these new centres of opportunity?

Or are you going to choose another country? Because that's the problem is a lot of countries are having these demographic shortages. You know, they're not having enough babies to support the ageing population.

They have workforce shortages and they're going to be demanding new immigrants. And we are effectively in competition with that, and it's never framed like that, ever. It's a big shame. 

I mean, on that point, Gaia, it is quite interesting. I do think the future, the next few decades, it will be increasingly framed as a competition, and I think there are a lot of signs that, that has to be the way it will go.

And we can see it already in some of the occupations that are quite critical for the green transition. You can see the countries are trying to poach each other's workers and there's some quite interesting things happening.

But I think there, this point about the narrative, actually, what you can see in the data in the UK is that there is an immediate impact.

So when the politicians stand up and say there you know, we need to bring our numbers down, immigration is too high, these study visas, they're far too generous. Instantly, within a month or two of that discussion around study visas and students and who was allowed to bring their family and who couldn't in different categories, the numbers applying for universities from foreign students just fell off a cliff, because that narrative feeds through to applications for visas instantly.

So, I mean, I think you're right that soon we are looking at a future of competition to attract these workers and I can't see how these narratives can be sustained if we want our economies and societies to function.

And, you know, we start off from a, you know, a much better vantage point compared to a lot of countries because we have English as a language.

You know, we, we do have a much less generally xenophobic population, particularly in our cities.

We have very multicultural cities, and we're squandering all of this through, politicisation and through this very toxic narrative, which is, which is hurting growth and hurting the opportunities of all of our sectors.

You know, climate, if we don't tackle climate change, we have, I mean, everything. Everything. 

-Sadly, the attitude is not unique to the UK. I would say that this is a problem across Europe and, of course, you know, North America.

We're seeing exactly the same attitudes and, you know, the same myopic perspectives because all the studies we've done here at ODI and beyond have shown very clearly how the biggest engine for development and progress in economic and social terms comes from mobility, from immigration, both for receiving countries and, of course, for those who send the migrants- perhaps to a lesser extent, but definitely to the remittances that migrants, you know, send back that by, you know, dwarf, but any, you know, sort of, shape or form what foreign and direct investment or, you know, international assistance in particular can do especially in low and-middle income countries.

But we're very much at time. I just want to close by asking you, Michai, what do you think you know, you, we said there are not some reliable, global estimates, you know, for the future.

But from your experience in your, research, what do you think the next 20, 30 years, have in stock for us on climate and mobility?

Yes.

So, I I do think to answer the question on data and information, that's gonna need to ramp up and there's going to be a lot more funding needed to sort of look at that, look at how we, attribute certain things to, to climate etcetera, because then that has other implications down the policy making cycle, right?

I think even beyond that, more systemically, and Gaia touched on this, the international community doesn't have a simultaneous sort of, like, plan and an operationalisation of a system to deal with this this loss that's associated sometimes.

As well as the opportunities, right, that have been highlighted as well collectively.

I know that there's a discussion going on in the context of the international climate change negotiations on loss, on climate change loss, as well as just transition, you know.

And I think it as, as Gaia highlighted, integrating migration into that discussion and making it more pronounced is gonna be very important.

And so things like the loss and damage fund that was recently, established and is trying to operationalise itself. There needs to be a discussion on how it can use- it has a coordinating role. How can it seem to coordinate with the rest of the system, including the humanitarian system, the development system, etcetera. And, and make sure that things are coordinated.

But as well, begin to fund things that are not typically funded. And then some of the things that were pushed and then the reasons and the rationale. One of the main thing was actually migration.

Because they, they know that, for example, with climate change adaptation and, and the funding of climate change adaptation, then looking at it from the of, of risk associated with involuntary sort of resettlement. Typically, the bigger funders of, of climate finance want to stay away from that because that's potential liability risk.

It's just, it's just, it's really tough for them to interact in that space. Whereas the loss and damage fund had a different point of view whereas it's the main one of the main focuses.

So how the fund builds out itself to at least it's not a silver bullet but it's one of the, the sort of institutions that can build practice, right, in this area where you're prioritising the tough questions of governing laws.

And I think, I think that's truly important for us to govern laws in this space, in the context of migration, but seize climate opportunities in the context of broader climate mobility in the just transition.

Not only for low emission development, but climate resilient development as well.

Because there, there are jobs needed for adaptation, etcetera, beyond just that. Yeah. 

Brilliant, well, that's all we have time for today. Thank you very much, Michai, Gaia, and Claire for joining me for this episode of Think Change.

I hope you've helped shine a light on an issue of increasing importance, but as, you know, we said earlier, does not receive nearly as much the required attention given its significance.

If you enjoyed the episode, please do like, subscribe, and rate it. It helps us a lot, and we hope you'll join us again next time.

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