Climate migration being ignored says new report

Migration due to climate change is being largely ignored by the world's media, according to a new report from the UK-based Ethical Journalism Network (EJN).

The “Moving Stories” report reviews media coverage of migration in the 28 countries of the European Union and 14 other nations and was published to coincide with Sunday’s UN International Migrants Day.

The report said that more than 10 per cent of the population of Nepal have migrated since 1995 largely due to environmental factors but the media has not properly investigated the issue.

Refugees from The Gambia, in West Africa, are trying to escape repression and poverty by travelling across the Sahara to Libya, but the media in The Gambia is tightly controlled, says the EJN report, and there is little recognition of the situation.

Climate change is not the primary reason for the migrations but is often a contributing factor.

A lack of government action to address a severe drought in Syria led to protests by farmers against the regime in Damascus, which then escalated into civil war which has led to hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees migrating to other Arab countries and the EU.

The EJN report says: “The migrant crisis is not going to go away… The impact of widespread climate change and growing inequality is likely to exacerbate it in the years ahead.”

Over the last 35 years, about 200 million people in China have moved from rural to urban areas – the biggest movement of people in that timeframe in history.

The EJN said that the media generally gives very limited attention to such issues in its migration coverage.