Climate Change Will Produce a Knock-On Effect in Creating Mass Displacement

On November 15, 2022 Senator Omidvar spoke to Senator Coyle’s inquiry on the importance of finding solutions to transition Canada’s society, economy and resource use in pursuit of a fair, prosperous, sustainable and peaceful net-zero emissions future for our country and the planet. Watch her speech:

Hon. Ratna Omidvar: Honourable senators, I realize I have an impossible task as I stand between you and a good, well-earned rest, but I beg your indulgence. In turn, I promise to be really short — 10 minutes — and hopefully, I will leave you somewhat enlightened as I speak to Senator Coyle’s inquiry on climate solutions.

I wish to thank Senator Coyle for her leadership on this matter, even as she is with other world leaders in Sharm El-Sheikh for COP27. I think it is entirely appropriate that I make this tiny contribution in our chamber today on this matter.

The evidence of climate change is before us, and it is undeniable: the increasing storms, melting glaciers, the rising temperatures in our oceans and the severe droughts. No country on Earth will be immune to these changes.

We also know that climate change will produce a knock-on effect in creating mass displacement, not just for the short-term as we saw in B.C., but for the abiding longer term. Already, as I have mentioned in this chamber, there are 100 million people on the move because of war, persecution, corruption and breaches of human rights. Now, we are beginning to see the mass influx of climate migrants. The International Organization for Migration, or IOM, has estimated that there will be over 1 billion environmental migrants in the next 30 years. Some estimates have it as high as 1.4 billion by 2060.

I ask this question, honourable senators: Where will those people go? How will they be absorbed? How will this movement be covered?

It is entirely possible that Canada and Canadians themselves will not be a receiving country of climate migrants but a sending country, so a global response to the climate migration challenge is imperative.

It also presents us with an opportunity to do business differently — to imagine a collective response that does not limit itself to what a nation state determines in its own narrow interest. More than in any other area, we need to move on from thinking that we belong to a particular land or that a particular land belongs to us because, as we know, climate change does not recognize borders. The solutions on climate migration must become central, then, both to immigration and the climate change movement, and not exist in separate silos as they do today.

There are a number of different proposals to consider.

In 1990, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned that climate migration could be the single most important consequence of climate change. That was 30 years ago, but nations have only begun to discuss this impact in the last few years.

Former Canadian ambassador Rosemary McCarney wrote in a paper for the World Refugee and Migration Council that:

There is no comprehensive international regime of “implicit or explicit principles, norms, rules, and decision-making procedures around which actors’ expectations converge” for addressing climate displacement. . . . there is a patchwork of initiatives . . . .

Initiatives that have disparate actors and silos that straddle multiple policy agendas. Ms. McCarney believes that both substantive and organizational actions are needed to address global governance of climate displacement. Responses should be grounded in fundamental principles of human rights, gender equality and inclusion. Gender-based analysis should be a key to understanding and assessing the gendered impact of climate change. She rightly concludes that this phenomenon needs an international legal framework to address climate change-related, cross-border displacement that can guarantee access to territory, assure status and rights during stay and offer long-term solutions.

Ms. McCarney also calls for the creation of a central institution or actor to serve as a focal point for policy implementation, supervision and research to bring about coherence, consistency and achieve a robust global governance. In other words, she is calling for a new international legal framework with a new international central institution.

There is much that Canada can do at the international level to push this policy agenda forward. However, we know that global change is not easily done. The calls for multilateralism at a time when there are strains and stresses upon existing frameworks — the logjam at the United Nations Security Council — do not bode well for such proposals, necessary and sensible as they may be. To get broad, far-reaching support from all nations will be challenging.

Therefore, we come to a second, less perfect but incremental proposal: a kind of “mini-multilateralism,” as the World Refugee and Migration Council has suggested, through the creation of regional arrangements where neighbouring states come together because regional spillover is inevitable. To some extent, the regional coalition between Colombia, Ecuador and other neighbouring countries in response to the displacement of Venezuelans serves as a bit of an example for this idea. In the context of climate change and migration, a regional arrangement in the Americas to deal with the inevitable crisis facing the Caribbean islands could be a start. Most of The Bahamas, including Nassau, is projected to be under water by 2050 with an estimated population of 396,000 people who will come knocking on the doors of the United States, Canada and Mexico.

We already have well-crafted agreements with these three jurisdictions — such as the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA — and so these could be a springboard to craft other instruments on climate migration. This is akin to what Professor Craig Damian Smith of the Toronto Metropolitan University proposes: a coalition of the willing — of like-minded states — with a commitment to solidarity focused on climate refugee settlement to come together as a club — a club with standards, norms of behaviour and even targets for climate refugee resettlement. To borrow language from our Minister of Finance, it would be a sort of “friend-shoring” in the context not of global supply chains and trade, but in the context of climate displacement.

In the migration space, there are already far too many bad actors who threaten international norms by wildly going their own way. This coalition could be an alliance of the good cops to counteract the Rambos, and if it works on a regional level, it would be easier to imagine more nation states joining in.

Going even more narrowly and thinking bilaterally, Canada could partner on climate migration policies with a like-minded ally like Germany to develop shared policies, protocols and frameworks on climate migrants. Germany, as I have said before, is a natural partner for us. We are both nations of immigrants and both believe in the rule of law, but we also both know that the tail will wag the dog without proactive measures. In other words, neither of us want to be faced with thousands of climate migrants on our doorsteps without the proper legal frameworks in place.

Finally, Canada can do more on its own and in its own time. Our current immigration processes do not adequately encompass climate migration as a reason for admissibility into Canada — not in the refugee space and not in the economic space. We need to create a new space with additional new numbers, and with the appropriate machinery of government attached to it.

Further, Canada’s policies for settlement agencies need to be updated. Currently, climate change migrants are not explicitly captured in this framework, and this may limit their ability to access services.

We have had many discussions on climate change in this chamber, and I think it is an über-complex issue. We have talked about the carbon footprint, resource extraction, pipelines and gas tanker bans. As we look at these issues, let’s remember to place climate migration squarely on the agenda as well, otherwise the tail will truly wag the dog. Thank you, colleagues.