Climate change creates refugees — welcome all refugees

It is predominantly people in poor countries who will suffer the worst consequences of climate change and yet they aren’t responsible for global warming.

Australia and other developed countries have an obligation to provide asylum and assistance to these climate refugees.

Refugees not responsible for climate change

Many Australians are concerned about global warming and are looking for solutions. Instead of pinning the blame on the polluters, some are blaming environmental problems on immigration and refugees.

Some prominent climate campaigners have recently argued that Australia should tackle carbon emissions by limiting population growth and immigration. Accepting refugees is seen as a threat to our environment. This is not only false, but veers dangerously towards racism.

Refugees make up a tiny portion (8%) of our annual immigration intake. But more importantly, it is not ordinary people – whether we be migrants or born here – who are responsible for the bulk of Australia’s carbon emissions. It is polluting industries, and the governments that refuse to confront climate change, who have locked the world economy into environmentally destructive practices and a reliance on fossil fuels.

For example, although Melbourne’s population grew steadily between 2001 and 2004, domestic water consumption decreased by 40,000 megalitres. During the same period, government has allowed agribusiness to all but destroy the Murray-Darling river system so it can continue to make export profits from growing rice and cotton – two massively water-intensive industries in one of the world’s driest continents. Immigration, much less the refugee intake, has nothing to do with this environmental disaster.

Opposing immigration on “environmental” grounds implies that we should accept that Australian per capita carbon emissions can never be drastically reduced.

Even if Australia’s population stayed at its current level for the next 20 years, unless steps are taken to make society more sustainable, carbon emissions will remain at today’s unacceptably high levels.

As the world’s largest coal exporter and the fourth-highest consumer of fossil fuels, Australia has done more than its fair share to create the environmental crisis.

Climate change is a global issue that will not be resolved by reinforcing national borders.  

Instead of pointing the finger at refugees, we must unite with people across borders to fight the real source of climate change – big polluters and the governments who pander to them.