‘Climate Borders’ in the Anthropocene: Securitizing Displacements, Migration and Refugees

Abstract

At the heart of contemporary, fast multiplying climate-security narratives originating largely (but not entirely) from the global North are the imaginative geographies of millions of impoverished Afro-Asians being uprooted and displaced from their habitat and crossing borders in search of the greener and securer pastures. The latest 5th Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has for the first time added a detailed discussion on ‘human security’ and ‘sustainable development’ in Chapter 20 of Working Group II. This undoubtedly is a welcome addition to the IPCC agenda and to some extent blunts the social science critiques of its earlier four assessment reports. Having said that, the citation above raises a number of complex questions, largely unaddressed, about the context in which to approach the complex but connected issues of climate induced displacements (cited hereafter as CID) and climate induced migrations (cited hereafter as CIM).