Shelter from the Storm: How Climate Change Is Creating a New Era of Migration

Journalist Hattem debuts with a deeply reported look at the new patterns of migration resulting from climate change. Hattem notes that humans “are an innately migratory species” and that environmental changes have always spurred migration but asserts that what is novel about the current moment is the pace of change. He takes readers to Bangladesh—“one of the most climate vulnerable countries in the world”—where, due to displacement caused by river erosion, nearly 10 million people are considered “climate migrants.” In northwest Bangladesh, the average household has been displaced a whopping 4.6 times. He also presents the case of Guatemala, where increasing droughts will have nearly two million climate migrants on the move northward through Mexico by 2050, according to the World Bank. Excoriating anti-migrant narratives in the West as racist, Hattem notes the irony that if Western leaders really wanted to reduce migration, they would focus on combatting climate change and “make it easier for people to stay in place.” He observes that many people would indeed prefer to remain in place, and makes plain that mass migration can amount to a devastating cultural erasure, as with the case of Bangladesh’s Munda people, a rural, forest-worshipping Indigenous sect, whose way of life has been threatened by “climate induced scattering.” The result is an informative and troubling snapshot of the current state of the climate crisis. (Jan.)