Climate change will displace millions. Here's how we prepare | Colette Pichon Battle

It was about two years after Hurricane Katrina

that I first saw the Louisiana flood maps.

These flood maps are used to show land loss in the past

and land loss that is to come.

On this particular day, at a community meeting,

these maps were used to explain

how a 30-foot tidal surge that accompanied Hurricane Katrina

could flood communities like mine in south Louisiana

and communities across the Mississippi and Alabama coast.

It turns out that the land we were losing was our buffer from the sea.

I volunteered to interact with the graphics on the wall,

and in an instant my life changed for the second time in two years.

The graphic showed massive land loss in south Louisiana

and an encroaching sea,

but more specifically, the graphic showed the disappearance of my community

and many other communities before the end of the century.

I wasn't alone at the front of the room.

I was standing there with other members of south Louisiana's communities --

black, Native, poor.

We thought we were just bound by temporary disaster recovery,

but we found that we were now bound by the impossible task

of ensuring that our communities would not be erased by sea level rise

due to climate change.

Friends, neighbors, family, my community:

I just assumed it would always be there.

Land, trees, marsh, bayous:

I just assumed that it would be there as it had been for thousands of years.

I was wrong.

To understand what was happening to my community,

I had to talk to other communities around the globe.

I started in south Louisiana with the United Houma Nation.

I talked to youth advocates in Shishmaref, Alaska.

I talked to fisherwomen in coastal Vietnam,

justice fighters in Fiji,

new generations of leaders

in the ancient cultures of the Torres Straits.

Communities that had been here for thousands of years

were suffering the same fate,

and we were all contemplating how we would survive the next 50.

By the end of the next century,

it's predicted that more than 180 million people

will be displaced due to climate change,

and in south Louisiana,

those who can afford to do so are already moving.

They're moving because south Louisiana is losing land

at one of the fastest rates on the planet.

Disappearance is what my bayou community

has in common with other coastal communities.

Erasure is what communities around the globe are fighting

as we get real about the impacts of climate change.

I've spent the last 14 years advocating on behalf of communities

that have been directly impacted by the climate crisis.

These communities are fighting discrimination

within climate disaster recovery,

and they're also trying to balance mass displacement of people

with an influx of others

who see opportunity in starting anew.

Since 2005, people have been called "refugees"

when they leave when they're displaced by climate disaster,

even when they don't cross international borders.

These terms, these misused terms,

that are meant to identify the other,

the victim,

the person who is not supposed to be here,

these terms are barriers

to economic recovery,

to social integration

and to the healing required from the climate crisis and climate trauma.

Words matter.

It also matters how we treat people who are crossing borders.

We should care about how people who are crossing borders today

to seek refuge and safety are being treated,

if for no other reason than it might be you or someone you love

who needs to exercise their human right to migrate

in the nearby future.

We must start preparing for global migration today.

It's a reality now.

Our cities and our communities are not prepared.

In fact, our economic system and our social systems

are only prepared to make profit off of people who migrate.

This will cause rounds of climate gentrification,

and it will also penalize the movement of people,

usually through exploited labor

and usually through criminalization.

Climate gentrification that happens in anticipation of sea level rise

is what we're seeing in places like Miami,

where communities that were kept from the waterfront

are now being priced out of the high ground

where they were placed originally

as people move away from the coast.

These folks are being moved, forced to relocate away

from the social and economic systems that they need to survive.

Climate gentrification also happens in the aftermath of climate disaster.

When massive amounts of people leave a location

for an indefinite amount of time,

we see others come in.

We also see climate gentrification happen

when damaged homes are now "green built,"

but now have a higher value,

generally outside of the reach of black and brown and poor people

who want to return home.

The price difference in rents or the ownership of a house

is the difference between being able to practice your right,

your human right to return home as a community,

or be forced to resettle somewhere else

less climate resilient,

less expensive

and alone.

The climate crisis is a much larger conversation

than reducing CO2 emissions,

and it is a much different conversation than just extreme weather.

We're facing a shift in every aspect of our global reality.

And climate migration is just one small part,

but it's going to have ripple effects

in both coastal cities and cities in the interior.

So what do we do?

I have a few ideas.

(Laughter)

First, we must reframe our understanding of the problem.

Climate change is not the problem.

Climate change is the most horrible symptom

of an economic system

that has been built for a few

to extract every precious value out of this planet and its people,

from our natural resources

to the fruits of our human labor.

This system has created this crisis.

(Applause)

We must have the courage to admit we've taken too much.

We cannot close our eyes to the fact

that the entire world is paying a price

for the privilege and comfort of just a few people on the planet.

It's time for us to make society-wide changes

to a system that incentivizes consumption

to the point of global imbalance.

Our social, political and economic systems of extraction

must be transformed into systems that regenerate the earth

and advance human liberty globally.

It is arrogance to think that technology will save us.

It is ego to think that we can continue

this unjust and extractive approach to living on this planet

and survive.

(Applause)

To survive this next phase of our human existence,

we will need to restructure our social and economic systems

to develop our collective resilience.

The social restructuring must be towards restoration and repair

of the earth

and the communities that have been extracted from,

criminalized

and targeted for generations.

These are the frontlines.

This is where we start.

We must establish a new social attitude to see migration as a benefit,

a necessity for our global survival,

not as a threat to our individual privilege.

Collective resilience means developing cities that can receive people

and provide housing,

food, water, health care

and the freedom from overpolicing

for everyone,

no matter who they are,

no matter where they're from.

What would it mean if we started to plan for climate migration now?

Sprawling cities or declining cities could see this as an opportunity

to rebuild a social infrastructure rooted in justice and fairness.

We could actually put money into public hospitals

and help them prepare

for what is to come through climate migration,

including the trauma that comes with loss and relocation.

We can invest more of our time in justice,

but it cannot be for temporary gain,

it cannot be to help budget shortfalls,

it has to be for long-term change

and it has to be to advance justice.

It's already possible, y'all.

After Hurricane Katrina,

universities and high schools around the US took in students

to help them finish their semester or their year without missing a beat.

Those students are now productive assets in our community,

and this is what our communities, our businesses and our institutions

need to get ready for now.

The time is now.

So as we reframe the problem in a more truthful way

and we restructure our social systems in a more just way,

all that will be left is for us to reindigenize ourselves

and to conjure a power of the most ancient kind.

This necessarily means that we must learn to follow --

not tokenize, not exotify, not dismiss --

the leadership and the traditional knowledge

of a particular local place.

It means that we must commit to standards of ecological equity

and climate justice and human rights

as the basis, a base standard,

a starting point,

for where our new society is to go.

All of this requires us to recognize a power greater than ourselves

and a life longer than the ones we will live.

It requires us to believe in the things that we are privileged enough

not to have to see.

We must honor the rights of nature.

We must advance human rights for all.

We must transform from a disposable,

individual society

into one that sees our collective, long-term humanity,

or else we will not make it.

We must see that even the best of us are entangled in an unjust system,

and we must acknowledge

that the only way you're going to survive

is for us to figure out

how to reach a shared liberation together.

The good news is

we come from powerful people.

We come from those who have, in one way or another,

survived so far to be us here today.

This is reason enough to fight.

And take it from your south Louisiana friend,

those hardest fights are the ones to celebrate.

Let's choose to make this next phase of our planetary existence beautiful,

and while we're at it,

let's make it just and fair for everyone.

We can do this, y'all.

We can do this,

because we must.

We must, or else we lose our planet

and we lose ourselves.

The work starts here.

The work starts together.

This is my offering.

Thank you for receiving it. Merci.

(Applause)