01x06 - Return of the Wall

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When the Berlin
Wall fell in 1989,

the Iron Curtain, which
divided Europe, was lifted.

Many Europeans were
suddenly free to travel.

30 years later, refugees across
the world are facing new barriers.

The Age of Peace, promised
by the Cold w*r's end,

dissolved into endless conflict.

Causing tens of
millions of people

to escape their homes
in search of refuge.

The United States has cut
its refugee quota enormously.

Australia makes it very
difficult to seek asylum.

Europe has attempted
to close its doors.

The walls are going back up.

Most people believe two
things at the same time.

They don't want the
government to inflict cruelty.

And at the same time, they
also want the government

to have clear control of who
enters the country and who doesn't.

Fear of migrants
was a factor in Brexit.

Brexit has been,
frankly, a fiasco.

It's made Britain look weak
in the eyes of the world,

almost an object of
division in Europe.

And a deteriorating environment
drives more people from their homes.

This is what climate
change looks like.

People marching with their feet

to go somewhere where
they hope to get a better life.

The mass movement of
people will shape our future.

All these people are trying to get out of the
world of disorder, into the world of order.

And what are they doing? Changing
the politics of the world of order.

Creating all these populist,
nationalist backlash wall builders

who don't want these people.

The world has transformed
over the past 30 years.

In the blizzard of
news and events...

it's hard to make sense
of how we arrived here.

But if we stand back, we
can see how things connect.

We can see the road to now.

In the 21st century, the number
of people fleeing w*r and conflict

is at an all-time high.

The United Nations describes more
than 70 million individuals as displaced.

Many who flee their countries are
refugees, people escaping persecution.

Under international law, they
have the right to claim asylum

in countries where they
can live without fear.

Many Afghans have sought to escape
their home over the past 40 years.

In 1979, Soviet troops invaded.

Afghan guerrillas fought
the occupation for a decade,

armed and trained
by the United States.

Through the 1980s,
Afghan civilians survived

by fleeing to neighbouring
Pakistan and Iran.

Many Afghan refugees remained in
Pakistan for a long time afterwards

and still indeed remain. And one
of the difficulties they have faced

is a demand in Pakistan that
many of them now return.

When the Soviets
departed in 1989,

the Afghan government collapsed
and the civil w*r intensified.

Eventually, the Muslim fundamentalist
Taliban controlled much of Afghanistan.

The imposition of Islamic law,

and the persecution of women,
caused more Afghans to flee.

The Taliban provided
sanctuary and training grounds

for the al-Qaeda
t*rror1st group.

On September 11, 2001, al-Qaeda
k*lled 3,000 people in American cities.

Within a month, a United
States-led coalition

invaded Afghanistan, crushing
al-Qaeda and scattering the Taliban.

It succeeded in the sense, that
we went there to evict al-Qaeda.

And we should have stopped there and
not tried to transform the whole country.

To try to modernise
a country like that,

to bring it to democratic
norms, was a fool's errand.

As the US and its allies
progressively withdrew from 2014,

the Taliban returned,
creating more refugees.

In the situation
we are in today,

where the government
controls bits of capitals

at the district and
national level,

but where the Taliban can
actually strike anywhere they like.

It's been the longest
military intervention

the United States has had ever
in its history, and it's still going on.

And how successful that's been, it
hasn't really, in a lot of estimations.

Today, there are almost 2.5 million Afghan
refugees registered outside of the country.

For them, there's no
prospect of returning home.

Many Iraqis, too, have tried
to escape decades of danger.

An exceptionally bloody
eight-year w*r with Iran in the '80s,

a crippling defeat in 1991
by a Western coalition

forcing the Iraqi army to
end its occupation of Kuwait.

Then, a US-led invasion in 2003,

the destruction of the
S*ddam Hussein regime,

a long, violent
occupation and rebellion.

It wasn't just removing S*ddam, it was
removing everything that he had built

and not understanding
the lessons of history.

With all of that,
you did not know.

You'd go out and you'd
be in a marketplace,

the one wrong turn, and there
could have been an ambush,

there could have
been a roadside b*mb.

Many Iraqis sold all they own

to take themselves on a
journey to the unknown.

By 2007, at least two million Iraqis
were exiled to neighbouring countries.

In 2014, new waves
of people fled,

as Islamic State captured a
vast swathe of Syria and Iraq.

It took years to roll
back the terror cult,

leaving northern Syria in
chaos and Iraq struggling.

Iraq is at least
stumbling forward

with some kind of power-sharing
Democratic framework.

Again, hugely corrupt, hugely
frail, could blow up tomorrow.

Syria? It's gonna be very hard
to ever repair that country.

Syria's descent into
anarchy, began in 2011,

when popular revolutions
swept the Arab world.

Peaceful protests provoked a
crushing government response.

President Bashar al-Assad
slaughtered civilians

and destroyed cities to
defeat the insurrection.

Most of the atrocities that
were committed in that w*r

were committed by
the Assad regime.

Most of the t*rture and the r*pes
and the indiscriminate k*lling

and the k*lling of children and
the use of chemical weapons,

that was perpetrated
by the Assad regime.

I think, one has to look back and
say that a terrible sin of omission

was to encourage the
revolutionaries in the Arab world,

but then just to stand and watch, as
Syria and Libya descended into anarchy.

More than three million Syrian
refugees crossed the border into Turkey.

Millions more found refuge
in Jordan, Lebanon and Iraq.

In total, more than six
million Syrians are in exile.

It's not safe to return home,
while President Bashar al-Assad,

supported by the
Russians, remains in power.

But it wasn't only the
West that failed Syrians.

Oil-rich Arab nations like
Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states

weren't as welcoming to refugees as
poorer neighbours like Jordan and Turkey.

What's the responsibility of
wealthy Arab states to the region?

Or more stable countries, to the region?
We don't talk about that very often.

We talk about, what's the fault and
responsibility of the United States

or the West or Europe
or partners like Australia.

But very rarely do
we ask that question.

What's the responsibility of the Gulf
powers or the leaders of those regions?

For refugees across the w*r-torn
Middle East and many parts of Africa,

getting to Europe
became an obsession.

Elaborate smuggling routes developed,
as desperate people converged on Libya,

with hopes of crossing the
Mediterranean to southern Europe.

From there, they would
venture further north

to wealthier countries like Switzerland,
Germany and Scandinavia.

In 2015, there were estimated
to be half a million foreigners

waiting in Libya seeking
passage to Europe via Italy.

With so many boats embarking on the
dangerous crossing of the Mediterranean,

the Italian Navy's first
response was rescue missions.

Seamen and doctors donned
biological contamination suits

to protect against
carriers of disease.

Do you have kids?
Babies.

Do you have babies?
No?

Most urgent, was to stop boats from
capsizing during the transfer of people.

Everybody needs to cooperate.

There is enough
jackets for everybody.

On the same voyage, the Italian
Navy took aboard another 230 people

being rescued by a
Norwegian merchant ship.

They'd trekked the
smuggling routes from Syria

and paid $1,000 each
to depart from Libya.

They all come from Syria and
they're escaping from the border.

When we told them that they
would not go back to Libya,

everybody was very happy.

The Italian Navy's rescue missions
were a humanitarian high point.

But neither the Italian Navy nor
European Union naval forces,

of which Italy was a part,
could prevent drownings,

estimated at more than 1,000
a year for six straight years.

The EU sought to
stop the migration

and choke off the
people smuggling rackets

by paying the Libyan Coast
Guard to turn back boats.

European countries should not
be funding Libyan authorities

to take care of what they see as

the migration problem
across the Mediterranean,

because we know that the conduct of the
Libyan authorities is profoundly a*usive

and doesn't rise to the most basic
standards that we would expect.

The European Union continued
to outsource its border control,

establishing processing
centres in Niger

and paying Turkey billions of
Euros to stop crossings to Greece.

But still, they came.

In the summer of 2015,

Europeans sunning themselves on
Greek islands closest to Turkey, like Kos,

found themselves sharing the glittering
sea and sand with waves of boat people.

Some tourists didn't like
seeing an inconvenient truth.

The island was a
study in contrasts.

Europeans on holiday
buying whatever they wanted,

boat people saving what little money
they had for the onward journey

were reliant on Greek charities.

We have to do it.

It's really important to have
something to eat every day,

nothing more, nothing less.

Syrians, Iraqis,
Afghans and Pakistanis.

Throughout 2015, 1,000 or
more arrived to Kos each week.

It's just a few nautical
miles from Turkey,

but crossings were
exhausting and disorienting.

Newcomers registered at
the island police station.

Some had identification,
many didn't.

Most often, they were
registered as ill*gal immigrants

and given a limited time to stay
in Greece, from one to six months.

This is a challenging question
for human rights people,

because we want to make sure
that people who are refugees

on the traditional basis,
are able to reach safety

and not be sent back
to their countries.

And then frankly, right now, we're
finding that pretty tough.

There's something paradoxical
about public opinion on immigration.

I think that most people believe
two things at the same time.

They don't want the government
to inflict cruelty on people.

They hate to see boats being
repelled in the Mediterranean Sea

when it might lead
to people drowning.

And at the same time, they
also, in a large majority,

want the government
to have clear control

of who enters the country
and who doesn't.

So when they see that the
government lacks this control,

that a lot of people are coming in,
undocumented, in a chaotic process,

they become very angry.

In 2015, in July alone,

107,000 asylum seekers arrived
in Europe by land and sea.

In the course of the year, more
than a million flooded the continent.

Travellers used whatever
transport they could afford,

but many, including
children and the elderly,

tramped long distances
for days on end.

Overland routes north through
Greece and Macedonia

and then Serbia into Hungary
quickly became clogged and chaotic.

Hungary acted decisively,
erecting fences

and deploying armed
guards to stop the masses.

Closing its borders with Serbia and
Croatia, routes to Germany were blocked.

Asylum seekers, stuck in Serbia,

appealed to Germany's leader
to show some compassion.

Because I got longer
road to come here.

I cannot come back.

Germany, the biggest,
richest country in Europe,

was the dream
destination for refugees.

Those who were lucky enough to
arrive by train, were met by volunteers,

trying to reassure new arrivals
that Germany would be safe.

Mindful of Germany's
Second World w*r history,

Chancellor Angela Merkel
welcomed Syrian asylum seekers.

Angela Merkel famously said,
"Wir schaffen das. - We can do it."

And some in Germany, I think, felt
eventually that that was a mistake,

that, in fact, it misrepresented
the challenge that Germany faced

in absorbing refugees.

While popular with
the political left,

many of Merkel's traditional
conservative supporters were aghast,

as were nationalistic
right-wingers.

The truth is, she was right.
They have managed it.

There is not a refugee crisis
in Germany or in Europe.

And her approach to handling
asylum, setting up proper processes,

creating mechanisms for
people to land, integration,

find jobs, education and so forth,
really looks like it's beginning to work.

And it should be an
example to other countries

that are more fearful
about taking this approach.

German tolerance of refugees
and of migrants more generally

was severely tested by an
unexpected expl*si*n of violence.

On New Year's Eve of 2015,

hundreds of foreigners, some of
them drunk, went wild in Cologne,

harassing and sexually assaulting
as many as 1,000 women.

Around us, there were,

I don't know, a group of 20 or
30 men that just surrounded us.

They were pushing and
pulling at our clothes,

and then just men got on
the left side, on the right side.

They would touch us everywhere they
could, between the legs and our breasts,

but they really tried hard.
They tried to open our clothes and so on.

Germans were shocked by
the mass sexual violence.

Some said, that for too long,
there had been a culture of silence

around criminal
behaviour by foreigners.

It is an extremely touchy
subject in Germany

to talk about crime
rates amongst foreigners

or amongst people with
migration background

because of German history,
because of the atrocities,

because of World w*r
II and the Holocaust.

Despite Germany's history, supporters of
an anti-Muslim group, known as Pegida,

campaigned against the
government's acceptance of refugees.

One of the big questions that
a lot of democracies are facing

is, who should be a
full member of them.

If you went into the streets of
a German city, of an Italian city,

of a Swedish city in the 1960s
and asked who truly belongs,

who's a real
"German-Italian Swede",

they would have said, well, somebody
who belongs to this ethnic tribe,

somebody who's been in this part
of the world for many generations.

Well, thanks to immigration
and demographic change,

that has started to change in a lot
of places, and that's a good thing.

But there is also a set of
people who are saying, "No,

"I don't want to accept that
somebody who's the descendant

"of Turkish immigrants, somebody who
comes from Africa or the Middle East,

"somebody who might
be Jewish or Muslim,

"can be a full
German, a full Italian."

These questions of belonging, have been
emerging all over rich northern Europe,

even in countries
renowned for their tolerance.

For much of the
later 20th century,

the Netherlands cultivated
a liberal reputation,

with progressive attitudes towards issues
such as marijuana and g*y marriage.

Even the controversial politician Gert
Wilders, who came to prominence in 2004,

has liberal attitudes
on sexuality.

We stand for Christians,
we stand for h*m*,

we stand for the rights of women, for
independent journalists, for whatever.

But over the past two decades,
Dutch tolerance has been challenged,

by Wilders and others condemning
Islamic religion and culture.

The ideology of Islam becomes
more dominant every day,

because the more Islam you have in a
society, the less freedom you will have.

They feel threatened
by the other,

and the other is someone
who doesn't look like them.

And you could say, you're
born and raised here,

but if you don't look like them,

they will not consider
you like them.

In the 1960s, the Netherlands
needed manual labourers

for work that the Dutch
increasingly didn't want to do.

Most came from
Morocco and Turkey.

Predominantly Muslim, several generations
have become entrenched in Dutch society.

After the 2001 terrorism
attacks in the United States,

and the m*rder of several high-profile
Dutch anti-Muslim campaigners,

public attitudes hardened.

Wilders campaigned for a ban on
Islamic headscarves and new mosques,

and ending immigration
from Islamic countries.

I see Islam as more
ideology than a religion.

It's not to be compared
with Christianity or Judaism,

it's more compared with
other totalitarian ideologies.

Like communism or fascism.

While Wilders' Party for Freedom has
a significant presence in parliament,

it's never come close
to winning government,

and was shunned by other parties

when a coalition was formed
after the last elections.

Nonetheless, across Europe, right-wing
anti-migrant parties have grown stronger.

Hungary is getting more
and more dictatorial.

Poland, more and more
nationalist, and one-party line.

Not to mention the very
fractious relationships

between ethnicities,
between nationalities.

I think the growth
of white nationalism

is a backlash that we're
living through right now.

In the United Kingdom, nationalism
had become a more powerful rally cry.

Anti-immigrant
sentiments strengthened,

and right-wing factions in the Conservative
Party, forced an historic vote.

Brexit.

If somebody had asked me about
the best-gathered country in the world,

a country in which
democracy has a long tradition

and will certainly
persist for decades,

perhaps centuries to
come, a few years ago,

I would have quite possibly
said: the United Kingdom.

In the early 1970s, the
United Kingdom economy

trailed Germany,
France and Italy's.

The UK was disparaged
as the 'sick man of Europe'.

It joined the European trading bloc
that later became the European Union,

hoping to stimulate
its failing economy.

Over time, it worked.

British firms were forced
to modernise and innovate

to take advantage of the
big European market.

London boomed as Europe's
leading financial centre.

Fundamental to the EU's rules,
the free flow of goods and services

and the free movement of
citizens across national borders.

As the UK economy grew stronger, it
attracted millions of migrant workers.

I think people have a sense

that this is an uncontrolled
and open-ended process,

which could go on for years
and which would, in that case,

greatly change the
sort of society we are.

Britons saw their
communities changing rapidly.

Publican Simon Braun left
his London suburb in 2015

after an influx of migrants
from many countries.

I felt as though I
was an outsider.

I almost made to feel that
I wasn't really welcome.

I was born in this country.

So I went and moved, because I wanted
to live in an area with people like me.

He relocated to sleepy Somerset,

where he encountered a
flourishing Polish community,

just some of the 700,000 Poles
who have settled throughout the UK.

There's a couple of hundred
people, you know, every Sunday,

and, like, let's say, 10 years ago,
it was just about 30, 40 people.

I was actually surprised,
when I moved here,

that there were so many
migrants in the area.

That surprised me, because I wasn't
used to that. I thought London would be it.

And in my ignorance, London would be
more of a place where they would go to.

The nationalistic attitudes
of citizens like Simon Braun

finally forced the ruling
Conservative Party,

to hold the Brexit
referendum in 2016.

It was a clear choice: Remain
enmeshed in the European Union

with all the financial and trade
benefits of a 500 million-strong market,

or leave and be free of rules and
regulations made in Brussels.

Immigration was a pivotal issue.

- Reach them first!
- Bite you back!

- Reach them first!
- Bite you back!

- Reach them first!
- Bite you back!

This is a Christian country!

And we will do everything!

Everything in our
power will be done

to drive Islam out of
this country forever!

The Leavers won
with 52% of the vote.

Let June 23 go down in our
history as our Independence Day!

As the hangovers of
celebrating Brexiteers wore off,

a sober Britain was left with the
harsh realities of breaking with Europe.

Brexit has been
frankly a fiasco.

An issue which was
very legitimate to debate

was not debated seriously
and soberly on its merits,

but was allowed to be
settled, if that's the word,

on the basis of irrational impulses,
inaccurate information, emotion.

Negotiating the terms of Brexit
proved extremely difficult.

The biggest deceit that those who argued
for us to leave the European Union had,

was their absolute failure to tell us
what was gonna happen afterwards.

The 27 other member
nations of the EU dug in

and refused to make
it easy for the UK,

not least to prevent other
countries from also seeking to exit.

It's discredited the entire
British political class.

It's raised huge concerns about
the future of the British economy.

It's made Britain look weak
in the eyes of the world,

almost an object of
derision in Europe.

The management of the
process, has revealed,

really, the incapacity of the
British political class today,

to manage and use the
political system they've inherited

through, you know, 1,000 years
of British parliamentary democracy.

For many, many decades,
even after it lost its empire,

Britain punched
above its weight.

Britain will punch
below its weight,

as a Brexit island floating
between the Channel

and the United
States of America.

US President Donald
Trump campaigned in 2016,

claiming there were 11 million
ill*gal aliens in the country

and border control
was inadequate.

Many of the illegals were from
Mexico and Central America.

They'd come prepared
to do hard manual labour,

working longer hours and
for less pay than Americans.

I will build a great, great
wall on our southern border

and I will have Mexico
pay for that wall.

Mark my words.

Mexico hasn't paid a cent so far,

for what President Trump
called his big, beautiful wall.

They simply want to use
public anger over immigration

as a way to incite hatred and
raise the political temperature

in order to build
a loyal following

which will allow them to get away
with anything, including attacks

on basic democratic institutions.

Agents of the Immigration and
Customs Enforcement Agency

have been raiding Mexico and
Latino communities across the country

looking for ill*gal migrants
and expelling them.

Walls along sections of the
3,000-kilometre US-Mexico border

have existed for 30 years,
but there are significant gaps.

Frustrated by Congress's
refusal to fund the wall,

Trump rated the military budget for
billions of dollars for construction.

But it's still more
of a plan, than fact.

And I noticed all that beautiful
barbed wire going up today.

Barbed wire used properly
can be a beautiful sight.

The source of ill*gal immigrants
to the US has changed.

The majority are
no longer Mexicans.

From October of 2018, thousands
of people from Central America

began trekking north with the
hope of reaching the United States.

Worryingly, they're making
the journey at a younger age.

We've got people coming
from Central America today,

primarily Guatemala,
Honduras and El Salvador.

We've got 187,000
unaccompanied minors, orphans,

from those three countries
in a four-year period.

In 2019, Americans
were shocked to discover,

that thousands of migrant
children and teenagers

were being held in overcrowded,
unsanitary detention centres.

Nonetheless,
America is a beacon.

Young teenagers Daniel and
Victor escaped El Salvador

to avoid being forced
to join a drug g*ng.

They travelled 1,300 kilometres
with thousands of others

in what was known as a caravan
to Veracruz in eastern Mexico.

Mexicans raised money for buses
to take the travellers further north.

The journey from
Veracruz to Mexico City

brought them 500 kilometres
closer to the border.

But the road was so dangerous,
they left with an armed escort.

Some of the travellers made it to
Tijuana in the far west,

There they faced metal fences
along the US side of the frontier.

More American border guards had
been sent to the Mexican border,

to head off what President Trump
characterised as an invasion.

All these people are trying to get out of the
world of disorder, into the world of order.

And what are they doing? Changing
the politics of the world of order.

Creating all these populist
nationalist backlash wall builders,

who don't want these people.

Most of the members of the caravan,
planned to claim asylum in the US,

arguing that their home countries were
unsafe because of drugs and violence.

The border, which Donald Trump is
so obsessed with, is a little paradoxical.

A lot of what we're seeing now at the
southern border of the United States

is genuinely challenging.

It is a lot of people
using the asylum system,

which was meant for individuals who were
particularly prosecuted in the country,

in order to make a claim to be
allowed into the United States.

Now, you can do that
at a legal port of entry.

So building a wall, is not actually
going to deal with this problem at all.

Australia has largely escaped the
big waves of uninvited migrants

experienced on other continents.

But after the Vietnam w*r
ended in the mid-1970s,

Australia took more than 80,000
Vietnamese refugees in the next decade.

The 1989 m*ssacre of students
in Beijing's Tiananmen Square

provoked an immediate,
compassionate response.

We have witnessed acts of indescribable
bravery on our television screens.

Chinese students studying in
Australia, were granted asylum.

But in the past 20 years, Australian
governments have sought to halt

people smuggling rackets
in northern Australia

from Sri Lanka through
Indonesia and Malaysia.

Many of the boat people were fleeing
civil wars in Afghanistan and Sri Lanka,

or escaping persecution in Iran.

The catalyst came
in August 2001.

A Norwegian freighter, the Tampa,
rescued 430 asylum seekers

from a disintegrating Indonesian
vessel in the Indian Ocean.

Australia initially refused to
accept the Tampa's human cargo,

claiming they were
Indonesia's problem.

The government has requested

that the Tampa not enter
Australian territorial waters.

As a political storm brewed, the
government determined that asylum seekers,

mostly from the persecuted
Afghan minority, the Hazara,

would not be allowed
to land in Australia.

We will decide who
comes to this country

and the circumstances
in which they come.

The government's tough
policies, helped win it re-election.

The Afghans were
transferred by warships

to the small, impoverished
Pacific island nation of Nauru.

But the boats kept coming.

And in December 2010, 50 people
drowned off Christmas Island,

when their vessel was
smashed onto rocks.

Lawyers argued that boat people
fleeing w*r and persecution

have a right under international
law to seek asylum in Australia.

Successive governments
ruled that boat people

would never be allowed
to settle in Australia,

whereas people arriving
by air, are treated differently.

The Australian government
has had a particularly

a*usive and tough policy, as
I think they like to project it,

around refugees, and
we feel quite strongly

that Australia doesn't
live up to its obligations

in terms of international
humanitarian law.

Manus Island was traditionally

one of the most tranquil
places in Papua New Guinea.

But in 2001, Australia opened
a detention centre on the island.

At its peak in 2014, 1,300
asylum seekers were held there.

Chains, locks,
fences everywhere.

And the compounds were
just like a chicken house.

And they would throw people in
there and they would lock these doors.

Detainees witnessed
riots, beatings

and a sh**ting attack
by drunken soldiers.

We saw people dying.

We saw people scrolling
on the ground for pain.

I've seen people
cutting their necks.

These four years was always, always,
always a great trauma that I could...

I can never forget.

Keeping people confined on
essentially outdoor prisons

who have legitimate
claims for asylum

is no solution, certainly not
a rights-respecting solution,

to the kinds of pressures
that Australia may feel,

as a result of conflicts
happening elsewhere in the world.

Turning back boats at
sea, has been largely

successful in
preventing new arrivals.

Steadily, the numbers of boat
people detained offshore, declined.

Some detainees took financial incentives
to return to their home countries.

Some, under a special deal negotiated
by the Australian government,

were granted entry
to the United States.

Among them, were members
of the Rohingya ethnic minority

who fled persecution in Myanmar.

Having settled in Chicago,

they remain scarred from
their years in detention.

More than 600 former Manus and Nauru
detainees, are scattered across the US,

some without their families,
many feeling isolated.

While w*r, persecution and poverty
have been driving up refugee numbers,

there's a new factor driving
the mass movement of people.

Changing weather patterns are threatening
traditional forms of agriculture

in Africa and South Asia.

For the first time
in modern history,

governments are beginning to grapple with
the prospect of climate change refugees.

Not just a few,
tens of millions.

Climate change refugee, is not a
term recognised by international law,

but in 2018, the UN General
Assembly explicitly acknowledged

that the phenomenon exists.

It said, "Climate,
environmental degradation

"and natural disasters
increasingly interact

"with the drivers of
refugee movements."

They may be moving
because their island is gone.

They may be moving because grazing
lands have been afflicted by drought

and their livelihoods
are no longer available.

Is that an economic migrant,
a climate migrant, a refugee?

People can't make their
fields work any more.

That's what it looks like.

This is what climate
change looks like.

People marching with their feet,

to go somewhere, where
they hope to get a better life.

180 countries agreed at the UN

that refugees could be directly
linked to global warming.

Only the US and
Hungary dissented.

The framework needs to evolve,
to take account of those situations

which make it impossible for people
to live in dignity, to live safely.

And if we don't want them
and if we don't want that,

we're actually gonna have
to figure out a way to stop it.

As sea levels rise, countries must
prepare for an influx of displaced people.

We're also talking about
forced urbanisation, if you like,

of people who must leave
low-lying coastal areas

and go inland, which
is probably to cities.

And there needs to be
capacity built in countries

to deal with migration of very
substantial numbers of people.

If the water goes
up in Bangladesh,

you'll have 40 million people
looking for somewhere to live.

And once you have big
populations being displaced,

the small concerns we have about
immigration of, say, 1,000 people,

1,000 people is nothing.

Wait until you've got
aircraft carriers full of people

coming along, millions of them.

What will you do about that?

Mass migration is expected in Africa,
Asia and Latin America by 2050,

according to an expert study.

The World Bank has come up with

estimates of up to 143 or so million
people displaced by climate change

in parts of the world, not
including East and Southeast Asia.

But the displacement
will be largely internal,

largely within
countries at this point.

The number of climate
refugees is likely to rise,

requiring an unprecedented
humanitarian response.

We are all either going
to be climate refugees,

or housing the climate refugees.

You know, the big,
latest numbers are,

that somewhere in the region of
200 to 250 million climate refugees

may be on the march within
the next 10 or 20 years.

Imagine that for a moment.

That's huge.
That's huge.

Looking back over
the past 30 years,

it's clear that wars have
been the big drivers

of mass, largely
uncontrolled migration.

Wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria,
Libya, Yemen, Somalia and elsewhere.

By the end of 2018, 70 million people
around the world were displaced

and looking for shelter.

That's double the number at
the start of the 21st century.

Western nations
are turning inwards,

dealing with their own pressing
economic and social problems.

I think, what is safe to say,
is that we are looking at a

change in patterns of human
population on a very profound scale,

that currently we have
neither the political

nor the economic or the
institutional tools to deal with.

And the central geopolitical
challenge of our era today

is how do we collaborate globally
to stabilise the world of disorder

so it all doesn't try to
visit the world of order.

You can only imagine how much
worse that problem will become

as the effects of
climate change deepen

and if the geopolitical situation
remains as gridlocked as it is now.

Just as after World w*r II,

we created a Marshall Plan

to prevent the movement of
communism from east to west.

Now we need to
collaborate globally,

to prevent the movement of
disorder, from south to north.