The battle to tackle the climate crisis must also defend people’s right to move and their right to stay, argues Nick Cullen
July 2023 was the hottest month in 100,000 years, followed immediately by extreme floods and storms. In the UK and across the world, extreme weather, bad harvests and altered ecosystems are changing how and where we live. People have always moved, yet as the climate crisis worsens, and the impacts on people in marginalised communities become more severe, more people have to leave their homes.
Yet, rather than investing in policies that will benefit all of us, governments in the Global North increasingly view border controls, walls and surveillance as a way to control the impacts of the climate crisis. They spend billions propping up the border and surveillance industry that profits from the abuse of migrants.
The Transnational Institute finds that the world’s biggest emitters of greenhouse gases are spending, on average, 2.3 times as much on arming their borders as they are on climate finance. This figure is as high as 15 times as much for the worst offenders.
