Climate Migration and Climate Migrants: What Threat, Whose Security?

Abstract

The proposition that climate change will or could generate international security concerns has become prominent in public discourse over the last few years. Building on a much longer tradition of debates and contentions about �environmental security�, various think tanks, government agencies and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) have produced reports on climate change, conflict and national security that argue, among other things, that migration can be a major risk factor in the chain of effects that link climate change and violent conflict. Given the Pacific region�s high degree of vulnerability to climate change, the issue of climate-change induced migration is an important environmental, social and political challenge for the region�s peoples and governments. The question is whether this is also a security issue and, if so, for whom?

This chapter explores the ways in which climate change and climate migration have been securitised, first in the general (global) context, and then in the Pacific more specifically.