Welcome back, everyone! 🙂
This week, I’ll be reflecting on global climate displacement trends and the involvement of the general media in the issue.
In 2017, 18.8 million people were internally displaced due to natural disasters, according to a study by the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC). A majority (about 60%) of all internal displacements were due to disasters, with the remaining (about 40%) being related to conflicts (violence, political and armed conflicts). Curious, I decided to look at what the report had to say about conflict-induced internal displacements.
Top 10 Countries with the greatest disaster and conflict-induced internal displacement (2017). [IDMC]
What stood out to me was the overlap in countries between the two graphs (disaster and conflict) – The Philippines, Somalia and Ethiopia were part of the top 10 in both. This could suggest a strong link between internal conflicts and disaster vulnerability, although the report did not explore this. Syria’s displacement was likely to have been categorised as conflict-induced, despite the role of drought as discussed last week, thus its position in the conflict chart and not the other.
Similar to Syria, these three countries also faced significant conflicts in 2017, such as Ethiopia’s political and ethnic conflicts, and Somalia’s airstrikes and extremist attacks. These likely contributed to increased displacement, although factors like geographical location (e.g. Philippines’ high exposure to typhoons, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions) and low income also had a part to play.
Given the large scale of potential climate-induced displacements, I wondered how the media covered this issue. Sure enough, there were many articles written in September this year about the estimated 1.2 billion climate refugees to be displaced by 2050. Despite the figure being an exaggeration and misrepresentation of data as pointed out by critics, many large news channels such as CNN, The Independent, and The Guardian wrote about this.
Although the figure is a cumulative representation of annual internal displacement by 2050, it is a much more alarming number than the 400 million estimated to be displaced in 2019, and likely caused significant worry. This would have been helpful in encouraging greater climate and humanitarian action, if not for the way this information was presented in the media, as mentioned by critics.
Firstly, this figure (1.2 billion) represents mostly internal displacement. The headlines, and for some, even the content, of these articles do not include this fact, therefore propagating the idea that large-scale transboundary migration will occur (laypeople likely gravitate towards this when migration is mentioned).
Secondly, great focus is placed on the fact that the countries most vulnerable to ecological threats are also the ones with the greatest conflicts and political instability. The Guardian and The Independent even used these as the leads or subheadings of their articles.
Thirdly, the content of these articles focuses on the great implications of this potential displacement, especially for the most developed countries. They suggest that it will disrupt peace, cause unrest, threaten global security, and put unparalleled pressures on countries of destination. The Independent even highlighted that refugees from the Iraqi and Syrian wars caused unrest in Europe.
These misleading reports likely increased anti-immigration sentiments among the public and politicians alike. Given the media’s (unfortunately large) role in shaping attitudes towards climate refugees, they will probably face even greater discrimination and lesser protection on top of other issues, unless the media shifts its way of presenting this issue.
– Hope 🙂
Hi Hope,
I understand that this post may have been inspired by the article written by Open Democracy. But I wonder why you decided to only focus on the same media outlets mentioned in that article, specifically The Guardian, CNN and The Independent.
What do all three sources have in common and what might have happened had you independently compared their coverage with coverage by Reuters, Al Jazeera, Fox News, CNA and Rappler, for example ? I specifically mention Rappler because it’s a Filipino news outlet.
Thanks, jc
Hi Dr Coleman,
Yes, one of the reasons I chose these 3 was because of the article by Open Democracy. I also chose these 3 because they are also the 3 media outlets I use most to obtain information, and so I was also personally very interested to find out how they presented this issue. Time constraints also played a role! These 3 outlets are large British and American-owned outlets, and this could also be why they presented information in this way – focusing on the impacts on developed countries (America & the UK included, of course) and how these refugees will come from politically unstable, and developing countries.
Thank you for your suggestion as well! I went to look at Rappler, and it was interesting to find out that they actually didn’t publish an article about this specific 1.2 billion figure and the other things that these 3 media outlets focused on. Instead, I found their articles about refugees to be much more empathetic, and many focused on recommendations with regards to its own context. For example, here is one of the article titles: “More solidarity with refugees needed as forced displacement rises”. I think the fact that the Philippines suffers from these issues definitely contributes to how they’ve presented this. When I searched “climate displacement” in Al Jazeera, I observed the same things.
It’s hard to compare between the two since they wrote about different climate refugee issues (e.g. different contexts), but when I searched “climate displacement” in the Guardian, for example, at a glance, I noticed that most of them had more factual/attention-grabbing rather than empathetic titles, thus likely less opinion articles as well with regards to this issue. I think it would be interesting to delve into this more, though!
– Hope 🙂
Hi Hope,
given that the news agencies have to recruit advertisers for ad revenue, do you think they have been influenced to intentionally misrepresent certain information to stir up the fear and feelings of the readers? I think that creating a controversy will incite discussions, allowing them to attract even more readers, in turn generating more revenue.
– Jian Xi
Hi Jian Xi!
Thank you for your question 🙂 Yes, I do think this could be true. I think the fact that they are British and American media outlets also suggests that they may have presented information to further American and British agendas. My reply to Dr Coleman’s comment below touches on this, and my latest post on the impact of the media on perceptions, where I did some primary research, may also be interesting for you!
– Hope 🙂