The climate crisis has become a challenge for the entire planet. Climate changes are becoming more palpable every day, the effects are diverse, they can be floods, extreme temperatures, forest fires, droughts, among others. Climate change affects people in different areas and their mobility is not unrelated to the incidence of climate change. The Groundswell report, published by the World Bank in 2021, estimates that 251 million people could migrate due to climate change by 2050.
The report maintains that climate change is a decisive factor in internal migration, due to its impacts on people’s livelihoods and the loss of habitability in highly exposed places. The publication estimates that, by 2050, sub-Saharan Africa could have 86 million internal climate migrants; East Asia and the Pacific, 49 million; South Asia, 40 million; North Africa, 19 million; in the case of Latin America, 17 million; and Eastern Europe and Central Asia, 5 million.
Chile is no stranger to this phenomenon, in 2017 the report “Migrations, environment and climate change”, from the International Organization for Migration (IOM), indicated that 15% of the population of Monte Patria, Coquimbo Region, had emigrated to the north for climatic reasons. In the press, the event was classified as one of the first cases of climate migration within the country.
Seven years after the report, the water capacity of the Coquimbo Region has not improved. With reservoirs barely reaching 5% of their capacity, water is running out. The president of the Northern Agricultural Society (SAN), María Inés Figari, warned that there is a true “humanitarian catastrophe” in the region.
“The water crisis is complex, they [los habitantes] They require support with their animals, there are springs that no longer have water, and they have asked us to reach other families with help,” said the mayor of Monte Patria.
The growing effects of the climate crisis could lead communities to move, however, there is still no consensus on who climate migrants are in Chile.
The researcher at the Center for Climate and Resilience Science (CR)2, Hanne Wiegel, points out that because there are several factors to take into account when measuring the impacts of climate change on a group of people, Climate migration must be understood as a multifactorial phenomenon.
“How climate change affects your life depends a lot on the context in which you live and the resources you have,” said the doctoral researcher from the Environmental Policy Group and the Sociology of Development and Change Group at Wageningen University. Netherlands.
The expert carried out research in Monte Patria, where she concluded that the concept of climate migration does not have a real resonance in the town.
“When I went to really talk to people, to listen to their interpretation of what is happening, I realized that this climate migration discourse really doesn’t make much sense to people and their experience. The focus was much more on the lack of alternatives in the place, the lack of generating an income other than agriculture,” he explained.
In that sense, he stressed that “simply saying that it is because of climate change is too easy, too simplistic.”
Furthermore, the researcher pointed out that analyzing the phenomenon only from the climate crisis makes it difficult to make adequate public policies to find solutions.
“If the argument does not understand that it is a complex situation and only focuses on climate change, it is difficult to make adaptation policies, for example, that really serve people,” he stressed.
Displacement flows
Another important point that the expert addressed is that, when talking about climate migrants, there is a tendency to think that the movements are from one place to another. However, the researcher explained that the flows are variable.
“Many times we think of a movement from A to B, people leave the place and stay there. But it is not quite like that, there are many more ways, for example, what we saw in Monte Patria was much more of a circular movement, where people go to work, for example, in mining, but also maintain their place in rural areas. Also, they keep their house, for example, or their parents’ or grandparents’ field, in the rural part, so it is also important not to think only about movements from one place to another, but it can also be circular or it can be for a time and then they come back,” he said.
Furthermore, he explained that “globally, most of the movements that are attributed to climate change, among other reasons, are within the same country, simply because it is much easier, because, if you want to emigrate to another country, there is already much more regularization , it is much more difficult.”
On the other hand, the academic from the Institute of Geography of the Catholic University, Rodrigo Hidalgo, said that one of Chile’s main concerns is water availability. In that sense, he stated that this “is going to cause movements and is already causing changes in land use, abandonment of agricultural areas and, above all, thinking about the entire strip of desert that has been running towards the south. I believe that the desert is practically reaching the Petorca River easily today.”
Additionally, he specified that human movements for climatic reasons have always existed, however, they are now generating other types of problems associated with population density.
“There is another migration that is also linked to the climate and nature, which is migration due to amenity and that has always existed. People who seek to get closer to the idyll of nature or supposedly paradise on earth. We saw that in the pandemic, all the people who went to their second or third homes. But there those people are not vulnerable, I mean, due to a catastrophic, human or socio-natural event,” he expressed.
Finally, he pointed out that “the Census that is being carried out now will give us a lot of light on how rural communities – which are very affected, especially in the northern area by this water crisis that we have – have been disappearing.”