4 April 2021 – by Atoosa Gitiforoz
The Biden Administration has marked international climate action as a key driver of his foreign policy goals. A climate change summit, organised by Biden, is to take place on the 22nd and 23rd April 2021, where 40 world leaders will discuss the urgency and economics of stronger climate action.
In February 2021, President Biden signed an ‘Executive Order on Rebuilding and Enhancing Programs to Resettle Refugees and Planning for the Impact of Climate Change on Migration’. The report includes the discussion of international security implications of climate migration, protection and resettlement options, strategies to identify climate migrants and how these findings impact US foreign assistance related to climate change emergencies, as well as partnership opportunities with other countries, international bodies and NGOs.
A policy brief has since been launched in March, by the Duke Centre for International Development (DCID), which specifically looks at factors driving migration from Honduras to the U.S. border. In the report, food insecurity linked to climate change was one of the key factors in increased migration from Honduras to the U.S in recent years. The report suggests investments to improve agricultural resilience to rainfall to improve food security, as a long-term plan.
A study by The Washington Postin 2019 looked at American public opinion towards climate migrants, compared to economic migrants and refugees. The study also looked at whether stances on climate migration correlated with positions about climate change mitigation efforts. The respondents by largely favoured climate migrants over economic migrants, and refugees over climate migrants. The findings also showed that most Americans don’t see climate change mitigation and climate migration as related. In other words, news about climate migration did not make respondents more likely to support climate change mitigation efforts more broadly.
President Biden’s efforts at reorganising the US migration system, callings for reports on climate-change mitigation and foreign policy efforts to push for stronger climate action, are promising. There are still significant gaps in the support line for climate migrants arriving in the US; for example, the US government does not have policies designed to support the mental health needs of climate change migrants. Recent analyses on the issue of US climate migration policy also points to the problem of treating climate migration as an independent issue. Studies show the strong correlation between migration caused by climate change and higher levels of violence leading to an increase in migrant flow. Recommendations by studies related to Honduras- US migration include: ‘A multi-track approach to address both agricultural resilience and the difficult knot of violence, governance, and corruption has the best chance of reducing the need of Hondurans to migrate.’
