Adapt or survive? How migration creates climate resilience

Alex Randall in the Ecologist: Migration is an essential component of strategies to adapt to changing climates, writes Alex Randall. Greens should welcome migrants and support their efforts to build climate resilience in their home communities. By closing the door to migrants we are denying vulnerable people a way to adapt to climate change - and choking off a powerful form of climate adaptation funding.

International Refugee Day last weekend marked the end of a week of tragedy. A Roma teenager beaten to within an inch of his life, and a woman stabbed to death in Essex for being a Muslim. The UN Refugee agency announced that Refugee numbers are now the highest they've been since World War II.

The rise of the right in European politics is a signal for the Green movement to stick t
o its current positive stance on immigration. Not swerve to the right in pursuit of support from UKIP. There are good reasons that greens of all shades should support more open borders - and one of these is climate change. Across the world millions of people are using migration as a way of adapting to changing climates. Migration is even creating a powerful form of home-grown adaptation funding.

Water stress, drought and desertification are affecting millions of agricultural livelihoods. As climate change forces people into poverty, migration becomes a way of adapting. This is isn't a distant scenario....

A refugee camp in Chad,  EUFOR in Tchad, Images by Ministry of Defence and Armed Forces of the Czech Republic