Green European Journal: Your latest book, Nomad Century, is about a world transformed by the impacts of climate change. It’s not some imaginary sci-fi scenario; this will be our world in a few decades. Why aren’t we talking about changes that we know are coming? 

Gaia Vince: Our leaders are not honest about the challenge ahead. We’re currently around 1.2 to 1.3 degrees above the pre-industrial average. And we’re already witnessing extreme weather conditions that climate modellers weren’t expecting to see for decades: droughts, extreme heat, and so on. This year, Spain has already had a huge wildfire, and thousands of people had to be evacuated – in March! So partly, this is unexpected for leaders, but they’re also not engaged. Some are better than others, but most haven’t looked at the detail of what these impacts will look like for their own countries, let alone globally. 

The effects of climate change will be harshest on the Global South. You talk about an “arc of uninhabitability” stretching around the globe. Where are we talking about? What will happen to people living in those regions? 

This isn’t some point in the future; it’s already happening. Argentina has just had its worst heatwave in decades. The arc of uninhabitability is essentially the tropics, extending south down to Australia and up north to southern Europe, parts of the Middle East, and across the United States. At least for part of the year, these places – now home to millions of people – will soon be unliveable for large populations.  

What makes somewhere uninhabitable? Heat, flooding, droughts, and wildfires are the four main things that hit people’s livelihoods and properties. These are all increasing in this tropical zone, including increased storm surges on coastlines and river deltas, where most major cities are located. 

Looking at heat alone, about 1 per cent of the world’s land surface is currently classed as uninhabitable. Some models suggest that by 2070, this will have risen to about one fifth of all land, leaving up to 3 billion people living in uninhabitable areas. Some of these will be within the EU. 

The other side of the climate crisis is the effect on the parts of the world that are today frozen and support few people and little agriculture. What will happen to the far north in the 21st century? 

Nowhere on Earth will be spared. The far north is one of the fastest heating places on the planet. In terms of its comparative liveability, it will be much more liveable than the tropics. There will also be more fresh water there, and agriculture will spread. Satellite images already show a massive greening of the Arctic. There will be negative effects too, but in general we can expect to see cities expanding and new cities growing up in places that are currently too cold to live in. 

Greenland, for instance, which has been too cold to support most agriculture or larger populations, will become increasingly habitable and desirable, with a warmer climate and plentiful water. We can expect a booming Arctic region, spanning Alaska, Canada, Scandinavia, and Siberia, all peopled with immigrants. In the context of the demographic crises and labour shortages experienced by many nations, immigration will become an important way of maintaining these northern economies and providing labour for the energy transition and other new industries in the coming decades. 

Nomad Century argues that people will move from the uninhabitable tropics to the newly inhabitable north. How is this happening, and how should it happen? 

Not everybody will have to move. There are already people living in pretty much unliveable places – in the Middle East, for example. But they live in very adapted spaces; essentially air-conditioned shopping malls, where everything they need is brought in: food, water, etc. That’s only sustainable for a small, wealthy population, not for, say, 30 million people living in Mumbai. Small populations can adapt to live in these places, but large numbers of people living in slum housing will not be able to survive under these conditions. They will have to move. Presently, most migration is internal or to bordering countries, but these countries and their neighbours will be severely hit. People are going to have to move further.  

Our current global migration system is completely broken. It’s ad hoc, and it causes huge distress. It doesn’t help the economies of the host countries or countries of origin, and it certainly doesn’t help the migrants. Migration provoked by the climate crisis has the potential to be utterly disastrous and cause huge loss of life and conflict. So we need to start talking about it now. 

Today, asylum processing by most countries is disgracefully slow, with people waiting years, if not decades, for permits and documentation. It is inherently complicated, and people usually have no legal right to work or access to essential services including healthcare. This leads to the growth of an underground economy, exposes migrants to crime, and creates fear and marginalisation. The long wait leaves migrants in limbo, unable to take part in society or contribute to the host economy. 

We’ve seen countless disasters at European borders, whether off the coast of Italy or in the Channel. Across Europe, the far right is playing upon demographic anxieties. Is the figure of the climate migrant driving extreme right-wing politics in Europe and North America? How can we dispel the notion of the migrant as a security risk? 

A strong message of Nomad Century is that migration is not a security issue. Many leaders in centrist or left-wing parties have abdicated their responsibility to challenge this toxic narrative. Migration is an economic and a humanitarian issue. It’s not migrants that are driving far-right politics, it’s populist leaders and nefarious interests. The mismanagement of migration also plays a huge role. 

There are better ways of managing migration, but we need to face up to the task. There certainly needs to be proper investment in housing, healthcare, education, and infrastructure. But without that very important social investment – inclusion in society, so that immigrants feel part of that society, city, or country – all efforts will fail. Immigrants need to feel that they are citizens, and that the population in their host countries recognise them as such. 

Refugees are not going to disappear; this is a problem that needs urgent international attention.

That didn’t happen in Sweden. Despite its generous welfare benefits, the state failed to invest in social programmes. The two populations were very segregated. The immigrants weren’t seen as Swedes, and didn’t see themselves as Swedes either. This social divide is at the heart of rising crime, competing underground economies, and the growth of the far right. We can do better. We need to talk to electorates honestly and stop saying, “We’re going to turn back boats,” or “We’ll keep the migrants in camps.” 

Many countries have benefited enormously from immigration. We’re all migrants, you know. If not first generation, then not very far back. We’ve all moved around. We can see genetically how mixed up we are. Some nations, like the United States or Australia, were obviously built on recent migration, but the same is true for many European nations. We need these people for our economies and societies. 

The job of leaders is to show the way forward. What institutions do we need to build to manage migration in the 21st century? 

We need a new United Nations-based institution with real power to manage the movement of people and help migrants transition to work and education. It needs to be organised democratically between nations, and it has to be well financed. The Global Compact for Migration, adopted in 2018, was an attempt to address the issue and create a safe, orderly system for refugees, but it’s nothing more than a symbolic gesture. The compact is not legally binding, and many countries either voted against it or abstained. Refugees are not going to disappear; this is a problem that needs urgent international attention and an ambitious, negotiated strategy. 

But efforts also need to be made at community level. There are already groups doing remarkable inclusion work; this needs to be broadened out to other levels. We need better education in schools, and we have to rethink what it means to be a citizen of a nation, or indeed of our shared planet. We need to get away from poisonous ethno-nationalist ideas and look towards a future where nations are made up of citizens who are aligned on key issues – such as wanting to live in a habitable world, wanting clean air, good schools, access to healthcare – and where being a citizen involves cooperating towards that project. 

At regional level, the vital negotiations between countries on managing migration have largely broken down (apart from within the European Union). That lack of coordination is a huge problem. 

You call for opening channels for migration. Would you go as far as no borders? 

No, I don’t think we need to do that. Certainly not in this short time. We need to work with what we’ve got and make it work for the Anthropocene.  

A new approach to migration can go hand in hand with the institutions we already have. Canada plans to triple its population through immigration over the coming decades because it wants to grow as a country. It’s put lots of policies in place, such as inclusion and speeding up applications.  

Now they are having to deal with migrants coming in via the United States under terrible conditions and overwhelming small border posts. This could be managed a lot better if the United States were proactive on this, but ultimately Canada, by welcoming these migrants, will be the winner. In a few decades, as the demographic crisis hits, countries will be competing with each other for migrants, based on opportunities and services like well-planned housing. That planning needs to start immediately; many of these countries are not even capable of providing the basics for their own populations, let alone for new arrivals. 

The migration politics of the European Union are currently based on keeping people out. What could be a more pragmatic and human migration policy for the EU? 

We need to rethink how people are managed; the current system is inhumane and causes unnecessary hardship and loss of life.  

Countries like Italy and Greece take on the burden of these huge numbers of people. Clearly, better management is needed here – perhaps through a quota system, and with much more assistance from other member states. Successful immigration requires initial investment, which is more than repaid by migrants’ contributions. These funds could be channelled directly to city mayors from a central EU pot and supplemented by contributions from businesses and, if appropriate, nations of origin. There needs to be much more joined-up, long-term thinking about how to support migrant flows of different types, from students to families to labourers. 

The current system is inhumane and causes unnecessary hardship and loss of life.

We’re facing a huge demographic crisis in the north; we’re just not having enough babies to support an ageing population. Italy’s current far-right leadership wants to prevent migrants from coming to its shores, but the country also has a demographic crisis. Sicily, for example, has one of the highest rates of depopulation in Europe. 

This demographic decline is a global trend. In many countries, a crisis is about to hit as the social contract by which young people pay taxes that help support ageing populations is being broken. The one way to fix that is through increased immigration. Many countries including Britain, Germany, and the United States are experiencing huge labour shortages in almost all sectors. There are large numbers of young migrants who could be in education or who are already qualified and could be solving this problem, but they’re not permitted to work. 

We need an honest, grown-up conversation about these things. On a shared planet, we have a responsibility to ensure that our species has access to its habitable areas. This means recognising our common humanity. We need courageous leaders who can spell this out, and who can also be strong on climate change, poverty, and biodiversity loss. It’s an unfortunate coincidence that, at this time of global crises, we’re experiencing a poor calibre of global leadership. 

So we need leaders to plan for the inevitable, rather than trying to pretend it won’t happen. 

Exactly. Be pragmatic about what we are facing and what our choices are; then we can take a democratic decision as a society. 

You’re also open to geoengineering. Isn’t it a Pandora’s box in terms of who has access to the technology and who doesn’t and what the expected and unexpected side-effects will be? 

Absolutely, but that’s where we’re headed at the moment. That’s why we need to be honest and talk about it. I think it’s almost inevitable that geoengineering – such as reflective technologies – will be used to cool the planet in the next few decades. Perhaps by a state that has experienced some sort of extreme disaster and decides to deploy it unilaterally. 

We need to discuss all sorts of issues around geoengineering: under what conditions would we use it, which states would do so? What would the parameters be, and the target temperature? How often would it be reassessed? How would populations be compensated for negative effects? If at the end of this, we decide to roll out geoengineering democratically, great. If not, what’s the alternative?  

None of this is easy. If we’d have acted on climate change in the 1980s, it would all be much more manageable; we wouldn’t be having these conversations. But we didn’t. This is where we are: millions of people are dying because of climate change, and it’s going to get worse. 

Geoengineering is currently taboo, but we must have that discussion. If we do go down that route, I would much rather this is done under agreed conditions, with proper governance and oversight, than by one company, individual, or country acting unilaterally. We need to listen to the scientists who have done the modelling, and then reach a globally negotiated decision. 

The idea of a “new commonwealth of humanity” comes up a few times in your book. It’s a hopeful phrase. What would this look like to you? 

If you zoom out from our planet, it is just one ball of biosphere – of habitable world – in the universe. Through billions of years of evolution, our one ape species has emerged. We were several different kinds of humans for hundreds of thousands of years, and today we’re just one species of human dispersed across the planet. Now we’re cooking this planet and making whole areas of it unliveable.  

If we look at the Earth system, and at the biology of our bodies and what we need to eat, it becomes obvious that species will need to migrate to zones of safety in the habitable parts of our planet, all of which will have to be adapted. We need to abandon the belief that some of us belong to certain areas only and are not allowed to move. The idea behind the commonwealth of humanity is that we all have as much right as anybody else to the habitable spaces on our shared planet.