The government must understand that migration and the climate crisis go hand in hand

We must adopt and fight for border policies that stop playing games with human lives, writes Scarlett Westbrook

Migration and asylum could not be more of a climate issue (AP)

Since I became a teenager, I have spent countless hours with MPs or in parliament pushing climate action, coming across countless politicians proclaiming their care for both young people and the environment.

Yet, these same MPs’ actions portray a very different picture to their empty words as they continue misleading the people whose futures they are destroying.

With the most recent IPCC report stating that our existing fossil fuel infrastructure will already increase global heating past 1.5C, we should be seeing politicians rapidly implementing the decarbonisation measures essential to meet the carbon targets outlined by the report, which has been dubbed as a “climate survival guide” because of the enormous projected extent of climate collapse if things don’t change.

Instead of listening to the science, our government is choosing to pursue oil and gas expansion by continuing with Rosebank and trying to pass legislation that forces refugees into horrifying situations despite our own complicity in their displacement.

The Illegal Migrants Bill is just another nail in the coffin of the Conservative Party. Highlights include measures to essentially legalise modern slavery, strip away the right to asylum for refugees and introduce permissions to physically and forcefully restrain children to deport them and other vulnerable, traumatised refugees to Rwanda; this all despite the scheme currently being contested in court.

Some 86 per cent of refugees and displaced people travel to a country neighbouring the one they fled, and the few that go further afield are motivated by factors such as familial, language or employment ties rather than to terrorise our economy (as the Tories love suggesting). In fact, the border policies they’re proposing cost us millions of pounds unnecessarily spent – yet we’re continually told climate measures are too expensive.

Only 1 per cent of asylum claims from last year were processed, creating a backlog of people left in limbo. This all while safe asylum routes have been axed so that the only way people can access refuge is through life-threatening “illegal” passageways where they risk exploitation and even death. These people face terrible and unsafe conditions without access to benefits or work as they wait.

As Zoe Gardner stated on Newsnight earlier this week, if the government was serious about solving this, they would just process asylum claims and use the community-based accommodation previous governments utilised, rather than spending millions a day on unsafe hotels.

As natural disasters continue to disproportionately ravage the countries that have contributed the least to the climate crisis, countless more people will be forced to leave their inhabitable homes in search of safety. Our enormous role in driving the climate emergency causing this mass displacement and continued inaction to mitigate future crises means that we have a historic responsibility to provide safe asylum.

The World Bank suggested there could be as many as 216 million climate refugees by 2050, and our continual refusal to decarbonise will mean that figure is only going to increase.

Migration and asylum could not be more of a climate issue, and progression on these dual issues is systematically blocked by the government.

Our government needs to stop causing problems for political theatre that sacrifices the most vulnerable in society all for the hope of a few votes in the next election. The public don’t want enforced endangerment of children and vulnerable adults fleeing war and persecution; we want policies that stop us from being underpaid, overworked and plunged further into climate and economic crisis.

We must adopt and fight for border policies that stop playing games with human lives, and that begins with stopping this bill. Having safe pathways to the UK and an asylum process that protects and supports people is not only the humane option, but one that we have a responsibility to deliver.

This needs to go hand in hand with rapid, ambitious decarbonisation policy that gives us an interdependent, sustainable model of governance that prioritises people over point-scoring.

This is a great opportunity for the government to prove that they really love children and young people as much as they love to say they do.

Scarlett Westbrook is a British climate justice activist and journalist