We live in a world where anyone can become a climate refugee. Migration is now a human right

The principle of the coming age has to be that movement of people is a choice – and those who want to move, but lack the means, need to be provided with it

Today, almost certainly, the government will suffer its fourth defeat in the Lords on an amendment to the Withdrawal Agreement Bill moved by Lord Dubs, a Kindertransport veteran, to protect the limited concessions won in 2016 on allowing unaccompanied child refugees to join family members in the UK.

These are – even the government agrees – some of the most vulnerable people on the planet. That it should be contemplating using them as bargaining chips is an absolute disgrace.

We’ve heard denials of that by ministers, but also implicit acknowledgements that is exactly the plan, whether in bargaining how other nations treat the (very small) number of children in the same situation leaving the UK to join family elsewhere, or, even more disgracefully, on issues of trade or security.

But last night I was in Brussels at a “salon” conducted by the Green European Foundation that made this debate look like very much a relic of a past age, a time of disgraceful, populist immigration debates from the age when neoliberals were trying to scapegoat migrants for the failures of their policies of inequality, privatisation and financialisation. (I reflected on it back in 2013.)

In Brussels, we were moving on – looking at how we can have healthy human movement in the age of the climate emergency, for this is a debate that can’t just focus on a small number of children, as strong as the pure demands of humanity makes their case.

We need to think about a world where anyone can become a climate refugee, a world in which there will be, needs to be, significant movement of peoples. That means reshaping the whole debate about immigration, starting with a simple, unarguable, scientific fact: migration, whether for environmental reasons or pure curiosity, is as old as humanity.

Our species spread very fast across most of the planet, encountering along the way other species of humans and their descendants who had travelled vast distances before us (and very much lived together). We have in the past centuries, the ages of the feudal baron and the European nation state, had a “sedentary bias”, an assumption that people should stay put and movement is a problem – but that’s an artefact of a short period of time and a particular place. And it won’t be able to continue; the climate emergency will see to that.

Inevitably, last night in Brussels the Australian bushfires came up, a reminder that anyone now can become a climate refugee, albeit that this case is currently exceptional. Most people at risk are in the global south, scant contributors to the climate emergency, but hit hardest by it.

For climate refugees are what many Australians now are. Like the vast majority of those being forced to move by the emergency, they’re nearly all staying in their home nation, but their movement, short or long-term, “forced displacement”, is what we have to work towards preventing in future.

Orderly movement has to be prepared and planned for in advance of disaster and tragedy. Those suffering from an inability to move in Australia – a seriously unconsidered group when we’re talking about migration – were in grave danger, and some lost their lives as a result. We need to stop that happening. Communities that have a tradition of movement in response to stresses are at an advantage. Others might need to be empowered to begin to develop that tradition.

The international community and its legal framework is starting to adapt to these realities. Coincidentally, yesterday also saw a landmark United Nations ruling that people can be climate refugees, who have a claim to protection under international law.

But that very ruling saw its limitations. The individual who brought the case didn’t win that protection for himself and his family, the UN suggesting, in essence, that he, his community, maybe even his nation, could cling on in deteriorating circumstances for a few more years.

Is that really a way to live? It is if people make an informed choice.

Another point that came out of last night was that habitability is not a physical condition but a social one – people will choose to adapt to conditions we might consider “unlivable” if their motivations are strong enough.

But a principle of the coming age has to be that it is their choice – and those who want to move, but lack the means, very often those vulnerable by means of gender, age or poverty, need to be provided with it.

How to approach this new age in terms of policy is a debate that we didn’t resolve last night. Do we widen, as the UN has started to do, the categories of protection, create some new gates through which some will be allowed to pass and many others be turned away, or do we use labour migration, family reunion and other mechanisms to welcome those who make the choice? Does relying on protection, creating quotas and barriers, mean there is a fixed amount of sympathy and compassion in our societies and so it has to be rationed? And what will happen as the demographic crunch that’s already being seen in countries as diverse in Japan and Italy hits? What if “climate refugees” are a resource nations seek to attract or capture?

Lots of questions, but one clear conclusion: migration is not a problem. It is a strategy, an opportunity, a fact of life, that our policies and laws need to deal with honestly, humanely, decently.

The British government could make a very small start down this path by accepting the Dubbs approach to unaccompanied children in today’s Lords debate.

Natalie Bennett is a member of the House of Lords and the former leader of the Green Party