Climate Refugees

Climate Refugees is the story of US film maker Michael P. Nash as he grapples with the issue of climate-linked migration.

In essence the film is a “talking heads” documentary. Experts are interviewed and Nash’s narration strings together interviews. However, his narration also focuses strongly on his own experience and feelings about climate change and migration.

The experts he interviews are predominantly European and American. The stark difference between the portrayal of the experts and the role of the film’s “victims” is one of the most jarring elements of the documentary.

Related: 

• How can we define climate refugees? 
• How many climate refugees will there be?

The film relies heavily on Western and predominantly male experts to explore the issue. While overlaying the commentary with usually anonymous footage of people from countries such as Bangladesh, Eritrea and Kiribati. People affected by climate change impacts are rarely interviewed, and their perspective or experience does not form a major part of the film.

To this extent Nash’s claim that he has travelled the world to understand this issue rings hollow. We come away from the film knowing little about the opinions and experiences of people facing climate change. Rather, their images are used as a backdrop to the commentary of the European and US experts.

Climate refugee documentary – experts and victims

At various points the lives of these anonymous people are explored. Often only to the extent that the narrator relays his own traumatic experiences involved in speaking to them.

At one point Nash describes the experience of meeting a Bangladeshi boy who asks him whether – having watched the film – American people will send help to Bangladesh. As the audience we are situated with Nash. The Boy doesn’t speak to camera. We don’t hear his actual words, we hear Nash relaying the encounter. 

So when we do hear a non-Western perspective – it is to present Southern people entirely as victims, and Western people as potential saviours. This pervades the entire film. The “Climate Refugees” who the film is hoping to explore are presented in only two ways. Firstly as victims – people entirely lacking in agency. And secondly as a threat – an invading force threatening the US.

This point is made most clearly with some of the films animated graphics. At one point an expert describes how climate change will force people move and a graphic of the world on a black screen appears. As the expert continues bright red lines erupt from the world’s poorer countries, shoot into space and then arc down to hit the US, almost like the trajectory of a ballistic missile. The red arrows the proliferate until Europe and the US are inundated.

Climate refugees: a military problem?

The idea of climate refugees as a threat if one of the central ideas of the film. Whether this was intended by Nash is unclear. In his commentary he tends to describe the people he’s met as victims. Usually describing them as fearful, crushed and already in a state of crisis. He encourages us to see them as victims entirely deserving of Western sympathy and help.

However the experts he interviews tell a different story. As well as various academics, he also speaks to military leaders and politicians. The military leaders see migration as a potentially destabilizing force, that could spark conflict. To this extent we are encouraged to see refugees as a source of violence and chaos.

He also interviews John Kerry – then Secretary of State. Kerry states: “The threat of refugees as a result of climate change is an enormous national security issue”.

We are lead to believe that refugees are not just a source of violence and chaos, but also a direct threat to the interests of the United States. This dual identity is another jarring element of the film. Refugees are somehow both hapless victims and a dangerous malevolent force.

Like most films about climate change it ends with an attempt to be up-beat. Again, the rosta of experts present their visions for hope. These cover a vast array of ways that carbon emissions might be reduced and the kinds of policies that might be needed to make this happen. “Can you buy a low energy light bulb, could you buy two?” one expert asks.

What is starkly missing from this final segment is anything about the refugees that are the subject of the film. There is little examination of how migration linked to climate change can be harnessed as a way of helping some people cope.

Nothing is said about how migration could be made safer for the people who will do it. The final segment is focused entirely on how refugees and migrants might be stopped. The hope seems to be that if carbon emissions are reduced fast enough, then no climate refugees will come.