Global Interdependence and Climate Migration

Anyi Li

Interdependence “is a way of conceptualizing the webs of connections between people and places” (Lepofsky). And such a web, or “a constellation of relationships, connections, and movements that link people and places” that interdependence tries to conceptualize, is space (Lepofsky). Interdependence can cause both shape and get shaped by geography. 

In “The Great Climate Migration Has Begun,” Abrahm Lustgarten introduces how climate change results in an insufferable living condition for many residents of locations currently experiencing extreme heat and drought. Consequently, these residents choose to migrate. For desperate migrants like Cortez from Guatemala and El Salvador, places such as the United States and Mexico render the special meaning of a new life and freedom from fear of starvation and violence. Yet residents of Mexican southern border cities, though relatively less impacted in climate, also feel climate change’s negative effects when crime increases and economic growth slows as migrants flood into Mexico, the place where they adore as their home and country. 

These shared negative impacts show the power of global interdependence: when one is hit by drastic climate change, others connected to it are also influenced. And this is because all places are connected to one another through spatial networks. As the original spatial structure, broken by climate change, can no longer sustain its original network, a geographical event in the form of human movements (a.k.a. Great climate migration) occurs to reorganize the space to form a new web of connections--a new space. Though the physical distance between the absolute locations does not change for these migrants, the relative locations change for them as leaders in the United States and Mexico enact different policies. For instance, when Obrador, the President of Mexico, decided to welcome the migrants into the country, the relative locations changed to be closer for the migrants since Mexico is more accessible to them. And when the United States and Europe enact anti-immigrant policies, literal or metaphorical walls erect to block migrants from reaching their dream locations and change relative locations to be farther from them. 

Building a wall or enacting restrictive immigration policies may seem to be an easy way out for the developed countries. However, it generates an ethical dilemma of the underdeveloped countries suffering environmental disasters resulting from developed countries’ polluting activities and only works for the developed countries in the short run. If the global environment continues to worsen, we could foresee a similar forced migration away from the developed countries’ near-equator regions. In the end, in this interdependent, global world, the only way to not become impacted by global climate migration is to get involved, help the migrants find resources to stay in their countries and work together to cut the roots of environmental change.

Work Cited

Lepofsky, Jonathan. “Lesson 1: Introducing Globalization as Uneven Interdependencies.”

Geography 121, 12 Aug. 2020. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. 

Lesson Notes.

Lustgarten, Abrahm. “The Great Climate Migration Has Begun.” The New York Times, 

The New York Times, 23 July 2020, www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/07/23/magazine/

climate-migration.html. Accessed 12 Oct. 2020.