0:03

If we can better prepare cities and

0:05

local leaders to develop

0:07

locally-led solutions that are

0:10

community-oriented, that figure out ways to

0:12

support people so that they can

0:14

stay close to home

0:16

and potentially return home, that's

0:18

really, I think, one of the best ways that

0:20

we can mitigate some of the

0:23

drivers of, and some of

0:25

the worst impacts of climate migration. Throughout

0:28

the world, climate change is influencing

0:30

human migration. In a 2022 report,

0:33

the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

0:35

found that devastating floods and storms

0:38

have triggered the displacement of 20

0:41

million people per year since 2008. And

0:44

while migration is influenced by

0:47

many factors, including socioeconomic status

0:49

and political stability, the IPCC's

0:51

and other research tells us

0:53

that climate change is a

0:55

contributing factor that is increasing

0:57

in significance. So

0:59

how is climate change impacting

1:01

human mobility? And what can

1:03

policymakers do to address climate

1:06

migration? This

1:10

is Columbia Energy Exchange, a weekly

1:13

podcast from the Center on Global

1:15

Energy Policy at Columbia University. I'm

1:18

Bill Lovelace. Today

1:25

on the show, Shana Tabak. Shana

1:28

is a human rights lawyer and the

1:30

director of immigration strategy at the Emerson

1:33

Collective, where she leads engagement

1:35

at the intersection of global migration and

1:37

the climate crisis. She

1:39

is also an adjunct professor of

1:41

human rights at Georgetown University Law

1:44

and an affiliated scholar with

1:46

Georgetown's Institute for the Study

1:48

of International Migration. Shana

1:51

joined me to talk about how

1:53

climate change influences migration both within

1:55

and across borders. We

1:58

discussed specific events in Brazil. Pakistan,

2:00

and even the United States that

2:03

have collectively displaced millions of people.

2:06

And we explored the connection between

2:08

climate migration and national security. We

2:11

also talked about her work

2:13

on the Emerson Collective's Climate

2:15

Migration Council, which urges governments

2:17

across the globe to develop

2:19

equitable solutions to address climate-related

2:21

human mobility. I hope you

2:23

enjoy our conversation. Shana Tabak,

2:26

welcome to Columbia Energy Exchange. Thanks

2:29

so much for having me. It's great to be here, Bill. Yeah,

2:31

it's great to have you on the program today on

2:33

a topic that I've been looking forward to discussing with

2:35

you for some time. And all

2:37

the more appropriate as we look at such

2:40

severe storms around the world that

2:42

make this topic

2:44

and its importance all that much

2:47

more apparent. But first, let's

2:49

talk a bit about you. You've

2:52

had an interesting career, an interesting

2:54

legal career in global

2:56

migration, refugee war, human rights,

2:59

climate and gender justice. How

3:02

did you get into this field? It's a great

3:04

question. And again, I'm so

3:06

happy to be here to talk to you

3:08

about this topic. It's one that

3:11

I've been really kind of personally obsessed with over

3:13

the past several years. But

3:16

I think that I would say that I started

3:18

to think about questions of migration actually when I

3:20

was about eight years old. A

3:23

friend came over to my house and

3:25

we were playing. And I remember this

3:27

so well. She said to me, why

3:29

does your grandmother speak like that? And

3:33

it had never struck me before that my

3:35

grandmother spoke any differently than anybody else. And

3:38

I realized then I started to ask

3:40

questions and came to understand that my

3:43

grandmother had migrated to the United States

3:46

and that she spoke with an accent.

3:49

I think from then on, I really was struck

3:51

with the fact that had

3:54

my grandmother not migrated or had she

3:56

gone elsewhere, my whole existence would have

3:58

been fundamentally distinct. And I

4:00

feel like I really grew up with an awareness of

4:04

how my life was shaped by her migration

4:06

pathway and that of my predecessors.

4:08

So that really led me to

4:11

go to law school, to kind of

4:13

ask these questions about why people are

4:15

pushed and pulled across the globe and

4:18

led me to a career focused on as

4:21

a lawyer and as a law professor,

4:23

focused on migration, human rights, international law

4:26

and refugee law. Where did your

4:28

grandmother migrate from? She was

4:30

actually born in Poland, Russia, which

4:33

of course the borders changed, but back then

4:35

it was Poland. And

4:38

it's interesting too how those stories, those family

4:40

stories come to mind, become more

4:42

relevant I guess as you get older. It's interesting

4:44

and fun that you recall that at such an

4:46

early age how that had struck you. I'm sure

4:48

that's something you've thought about a lot since then

4:50

in your work. Definitely, it's one of those

4:53

things that people with a career like mine, so many people

4:55

have asked me over the years, how did you end up

4:57

doing this kind of work? And I've

5:00

realized, I think the great, just

5:03

the privilege and the fact that, had

5:06

I grown up as a girl in

5:09

any other part of the world, I might not

5:11

have had the same opportunities that I'd had had

5:13

I grown up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. And I was

5:15

very fortunate to have lived a life relatively

5:17

free of prejudice and challenges.

5:21

And anyway, so I think that

5:23

that really very much affected my

5:25

path moving forward. But I will

5:27

say that over the past several

5:29

years, I was teaching international law,

5:32

teaching migration, representing migrants in detention

5:34

centers at the border. I

5:36

was always very interested in thinking about why they

5:38

left home, because

5:41

I know how important home is to people

5:43

and how hard it is to make that

5:45

decision to leave home. And

5:48

simultaneous to that happening, I

5:50

was also starting to

5:52

frankly lose a lot of sleep at night about

5:55

the climate crisis. I'm a

5:57

parent, I'm a concerned human being on

5:59

this planet. because

16:01

adaptation to climate change is really, it's

16:03

not about saving the planet, it's about

16:05

saving ourselves. It's about ensuring

16:08

that people on this

16:10

planet, irrespective of where they're born, irrespective

16:12

of the opportunities that they've had, are

16:14

able to successfully adapt

16:16

and build resilience in

16:19

light of the climate change that faces us. Yeah,

16:22

and it's a, this Climate Migration

16:24

Council at Emerson, it's a group,

16:27

it includes a number of well-known figures,

16:29

like Chef Jose Andreas, former

16:32

U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Michael

16:35

Chertoff, David Miliband, he

16:37

was the former Secretary of State for

16:39

Foreign Affairs in the United Kingdom, and

16:41

Fred Krup, Environmental Defense Fund, Monish Bapna,

16:44

Head of Natural Resources,

16:46

Defense Council. What does

16:48

the Council do? I

16:51

imagine it has a long list of

16:53

things, policy, and other steps that need

16:55

to be taken, but there's

16:57

a lot of organizations like this that form,

16:59

and I'm always curious to see how exactly

17:02

they go about doing this work. Yeah,

17:04

well, there's a number of ways that

17:06

the Council operates, and at its heart,

17:10

I serve as an advisor to the Council,

17:12

but the action of the Council is driven

17:14

by its members, and thinking about the list

17:16

of individuals that you just named, and

17:19

I would add to that, other leaders

17:21

in humanitarian effort,

17:23

humanitarian response efforts, locally-led climate

17:25

justice work in the United

17:27

States, and so

17:29

we have an incredible diversity of leaders and experts who

17:32

we believe have the power to

17:34

affect global, to actually help us

17:37

get to what I was saying

17:39

we are lacking right now, which

17:41

is a preemptive plan

17:44

and a readiness approach to

17:48

climate and mobility, to think about

17:50

ways to bring funding

17:52

to cities so that they can better

17:55

support people who are displaced internally, to

17:58

ensure that small island development developing

18:00

nations across the globe who

18:03

are unfortunately, disproportionately

18:07

impacted by rising sea levels and

18:09

may no longer exist in several

18:11

years to ensure that we

18:13

have pathways for those people, where will they

18:15

live? Where will they go? And

18:18

also to advocate for a broadening

18:21

of migration pathways as

18:23

we understand them, so that we can

18:26

recognize that we need to do a better

18:28

job of basically

18:31

creating global systems across so

18:33

many different sectors in

18:35

order to prevent the

18:37

most damaging impacts of climate

18:40

change, and also to help

18:42

people who are already in the context of having

18:44

to move. And I say that

18:46

because I think we really think about

18:48

the work as a two-prong strategy. So

18:51

when we talk about climate and mobility,

18:55

one of the ways that we like to talk about it is, I

18:58

like to frame it sort of as

19:00

a continuum of climate mobility, meaning we're

19:02

talking about people who are already on

19:05

the move, who are migrating,

19:07

whether it's voluntarily or involuntarily.

19:10

We're talking about people who might be part

19:12

of a planned relocation, people

19:15

who are working with their government

19:17

or with their local community in order to find a

19:20

new place to live in light of the way that

19:22

climate is going to impact them. And

19:24

we also in that continuum are thinking

19:26

about people who may be immobile in

19:29

light of the climate impacts that they

19:31

face, meaning they don't want to move

19:33

because they have a strong indigenous attachment

19:35

or to the land that they live

19:37

in, or they are unable

19:40

to move because of limitations. To

19:43

migrate costs money. It's not a cheap

19:46

endeavor. So anyway, so when I

19:48

say we have this continuum of people, we

19:51

have a large number of people who

19:53

along this continuum. And

19:56

what the Climate Migration Council is trying to do is to

20:00

support people who are moving

20:03

in the context of climate, to help

20:05

them do that in a safe, dignified

20:07

manner, whether it's internally or cross-border, but

20:10

also, and equally so, to

20:12

prevent people from having to move, to help

20:14

people figure out how to stay at home

20:18

in the context of climate. And so

20:20

that's about adaptation and resilience. Other examples

20:22

he can offer that show effective steps

20:25

that have been taken, either to help

20:27

people once they're forced to move or

20:30

help them remain at home. As

20:33

I was just talking about planned

20:35

relocation, the example that comes

20:37

to mind is an example

20:40

that's gotten a bit of press over the

20:42

past several weeks in Panama. There

20:45

was an effort to build,

20:49

basically essentially to plan relocation for

20:51

the Guna indigenous people. It

20:53

was a coastal community living

20:55

in a very precariously vulnerable

20:59

to the rising sea levels on

21:01

the coast area. And working

21:03

with the government, they were able to build

21:06

out a plan over several years to

21:11

plan for, fund, and implement

21:13

a community-led relocation of their

21:15

entire community. And

21:18

really, this is exactly the type

21:20

of anticipatory action that

21:22

is needed. Not a single person died. This

21:25

didn't really, this didn't reach, you

21:27

know, didn't reach the headlines because of some awful incident

21:30

where people were falling

21:33

into the sea. But arguably

21:36

the government of Panama in engaging

21:38

in this community-led preemptive action is

21:41

able to prevent some of the worst

21:43

damages that

21:45

climate change could cause. That said,

21:47

climate disasters can drive people to leave

21:50

their countries, right? And

21:52

we saw this in Pakistan where in

21:54

2023, there

21:56

was a monsoon

21:59

floods that... As

22:02

a result of which, some 1.5 million people are, remain

22:05

displaced today as I understand it.

22:08

And that led to an increase in

22:10

Pakistan residents seeking asylum in Europe. Well,

22:12

we see more climate migration occurring

22:15

externally in the years

22:17

ahead. So

22:20

the question of, and the example of Pakistan

22:22

is totally accurate. Millions were

22:24

displaced in Pakistan. And

22:27

obviously, like all that type of displacement, it

22:29

happens internally and then it can, as you

22:31

said, shift into

22:34

cross-border migration. And

22:37

I think that really speaks to the difficulty

22:40

of understanding climate migration because of the multiple

22:42

steps and phases that it can occur in.

22:45

But when you ask about,

22:49

will we see more cross-border

22:51

climate migration? That

22:53

is a question that really nobody

22:56

can answer. And

22:58

I say that despite the fact that we do

23:00

have people who are going to try and predict

23:03

and make, they make predictions around

23:05

what we're going to

23:07

see in terms of numbers around climate

23:09

migration. But in

23:12

my mind, the range is

23:14

so big between what

23:16

we know and what we might know.

23:19

The range that we need to offer is so big

23:21

that the imprecision has to be obvious. And so what

23:24

I mean there is you offered earlier the number

23:26

of 216 million people

23:28

by the year 2050. That

23:31

comes from a World Bank study that talked

23:33

about internal migration. And that

23:35

is a really helpful and important number. But

23:39

we also hear, maybe you've heard

23:41

this bill, the number of one

23:43

to three billion people will

23:46

be displaced by climate by the year 2070. So

23:50

what's going on between 216 million and three

23:53

billion? That's a

23:55

huge range. And

23:57

the way we understand that is when we think about

23:59

that number. in

40:01

need of a reorganization

40:03

and a re-understanding of the

40:05

ways in which climate finance

40:07

can be directed to populations

40:10

to mitigate some of these

40:12

worst impacts of climate change and the ways

40:14

in which it might force people to leave

40:16

their homes when they actually don't want

40:18

to leave their homes. And

40:20

it seems as important as well for those

40:23

stories to be told where the steps

40:25

taken have proven to be effective,

40:27

right? I'm not sure that

40:30

and maybe this falls back in my old

40:32

profession, journalism, but perhaps these stories aren't being

40:34

told to the extent they need to be

40:36

told so people see the impact,

40:38

the effectiveness of taking these steps and

40:40

why it matters even

40:42

here back home. No, absolutely. You

40:44

know, one thing that comes to mind is

40:46

there is we have a member of the

40:48

Climate Migration Council who he

40:51

is the mayor of

40:53

the largest city in Somaliland

40:56

and Somaliland it's a country that has been

40:59

very much affected by desertification

41:02

and rising temperatures and

41:05

like in many places people have found it difficult

41:07

due to the rising temperatures to continue to survive

41:10

on subsistence agriculture. In

41:13

partnership with humanitarian organizations,

41:17

the mayor has really

41:20

taken a lead

41:22

in building out green development,

41:25

sort of you know developments around

41:27

the city that are both in

41:30

their architecture and in their urban planning

41:33

model very much oriented toward green development

41:35

of cities and they

41:37

are trying to figure out ways to both support

41:40

and welcome in migrants who are

41:42

coming to this capital city but

41:45

then also to help them

41:47

find jobs in the green

41:49

economy. We recognize that this

41:51

transition that we are all

41:54

part of into electrification and

41:57

making sure that we don't continue to live in a way

41:59

that we can. world that is contributing to

42:01

greenhouse gas emissions. It's going to require so

42:04

many shifts in jobs, in

42:07

electrification, in expertise.

42:11

And so we see opportunities

42:13

there for local

42:16

leaders to both welcome

42:19

migrants who may be displaced by climate, but

42:21

also to ensure that those people are able

42:23

to contribute to the changes that

42:25

we need to see in order to lessen

42:29

the worst impacts of global warming.

42:31

These are important stories to tell

42:34

and Shayna Tabak thanks for sharing

42:36

them today on Columbia Energy Exchange. Absolutely, really

42:38

happy to be here. Thank you so much.

42:45

That's it for this week's episode of

42:47

Columbia Energy Exchange. Thank you again Shayna

42:49

Tabak and thank you for listening. The

42:52

show is brought to you by the

42:54

Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia

42:56

University School of International and Public Affairs.

42:59

The show is hosted by Jason Bordoff

43:01

and me Bill Loveless. The

43:03

show is produced by Aaron Hardick

43:05

from Latitude Studios. Additional support

43:07

from Lily Lee, Caroline Pittman

43:09

and Q Lee. Roy

43:11

Campanella is the sound engineer. For

43:14

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