Is the world ready for more climate migration?
The Inquiry
BBC
4.6 • 1.7K Ratings
🗓️ 11 November 2025
⏱️ 24 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
From floods in Pakistan to droughts in the Horn of Africa, extreme weather events are already forcing millions of people to move. Most are displaced within their own countries but rising temperatures and sea levels could soon push many across national borders.
Yet international law offers little protection for those uprooted by the changing climate, and few countries appear ready for the scale of movement predicted in coming decades.
Charmaine Cozier explores how communities, governments and international systems could respond as the number of people displaced by climate change grows.
This week on The Inquiry, we’re asking: Is the world ready for more climate migration?
Presenter: Charmaine Cozier Producer: Matt Toulson Researcher: Maeve Schaffer Editor: Tom Bigwood Technical Producer: Craig Boardman Production Management Assistant: Liam Morrey
Contributors:
Amali Tower, founder and executive director of Climate Refugees
Dr Lagipoiva Cherelle Jackson, Samoan climate journalist and professor of Pacific Island Studies at Portland State University, US
Alessio Terzi, professor of Public Policy at the University of Cambridge, UK
Gaia Vince, writer, Anthropocene researcher and the author of Nomad Century: How to Survive the Climate Upheaval
(Photo: Kuakata Sea Beach Patuakhali District, Bangladesh. Credit: NurPhoto/Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts. |
| 0:05.6 | Welcome to the inquiry from the BBC World Service. I'm Charmaine Cozier. Each week, |
| 0:11.1 | one question, four expert witnesses and an answer. |
| 0:17.4 | March 1995, Berlin, Germany. The first ever annual conference based around a United Nations treaty to coordinate international responses to climate change is underway. |
| 0:30.1 | A senior UN official, Michael Zamekutaya, gives an opening speech. |
| 0:35.1 | Climate change is not a problem that can be solved by one group of countries acting in isolation. |
| 0:43.0 | It can only be addressed successfully by the global community. |
| 0:47.8 | In the 30 years since that initial conference of the parties, or COP, |
| 0:52.9 | hundreds of millions of people have been internally displaced after the worst effects of rising |
| 0:58.3 | global temperatures force them from homes and jobs. |
| 1:02.5 | Those numbers are predicted to rise and expand beyond national borders. |
| 1:08.0 | So this week we're asking, is the world ready for more climate migration? |
| 1:14.5 | Part one, slow and sudden. |
| 1:19.0 | There's no place in the world in which climate change has not had an imprint, is not impacting people. |
| 1:26.4 | Amali Tower is the founder and executive director of |
| 1:30.1 | climate refugees, a global NGO focused on climate mobility. But where you're seeing the impacts of |
| 1:37.9 | climate change increasing displacement of people is in the most vulnerable poverty-stricken areas in the world. |
| 1:45.8 | Climate change impacts generally emerge in two ways. |
| 1:49.4 | There's what the scientists call slow onset events and sudden onset events. |
| 1:54.2 | Sudden onset events are a little bit easier to understand for the average person. |
| 1:58.5 | You're talking about the increasing frequency and intensity of storms, |
| 2:03.0 | hurricanes, cyclones, you know, disasters that come suddenly, displace people. Once the disaster's over, |
... |
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