# Border Control and Climate Finance

My summary: Climate change is increasingly a factor behind displacement and migration. A recent report shows that the US and other high-emitting countries spend more and more money on securing their border while at the same time not reaching their own targets on climate finance to help adapting to climate change the countries where most of the migrants come from. Which direction should the US take on this issue?

## Quotes from the report

From the TNI report [How the world’s wealthiest nations prioritise borders over climate action](https://www.tni.org/en/publication/global-climate-wall):

"Climate change is increasingly a factor behind displacement and migration."

"Seven of the biggest emitters of GHGs – the United States, Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom, Canada, France and Australia – collectively spent at least twice as much on border and immigration enforcement (more than $33.1 billion) as on climate finance ($14.4 billion) between 2013 and 2018."

"In the US, spending on border and immigration enforcement tripled between 2003 and 2021."

"Climate finance could help mitigate the impacts of climate change and help countries adapt to this reality, including supporting people who need to relocate or to migrate abroad. Yet the richest countries have failed even to keep their pledges of meagre $100 billion a year in climate finance."

"The world’s 10 largest fossil fuel firms also contract the services of the same firms that dominate border security contracts."

"What all this amounts to is that every time a refugee or migrant tries to cross the US–Mexico border or US-funded border controls elsewhere, such as the Mexican border with Guatemala, or tries to cross into the EU from countries such as Afghanistan, Liberia, Senegal, Sudan or Syria – countries least responsible for climate change – they are is confronted with the walls and guns of the countries with the largest historic emissions. The world’s top emitters are failing to provide necessary climate finance, yet seem to have limitless budgets for borders and immigration enforcement. **In a world in which there is a proportionately far larger migrant population than in recent history, with more displacement on the horizon, the ‘climate adaptation’ plan for high- income, high-emitting countries appears to be to invest in a punitive, carceral enforcement system for displaced people rather than dedicating funds to assist low-income, low-emitting countries to mitigate and adapt to climate change.**"

## Details

More quotes from the TNI report on the [Global Climate Wall - How the world’s wealthiest nations prioritise borders over climate action](https://www.tni.org/files/publication-downloads/global-climate-wall-report-tni-web-resolution.pdf):

- In 2009, at the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, the richest countries committed to mobilise $100 billion a year in climate finance by 2020 for developing countries. In the run-up the climate talks in Paris in 2015, the previously pledged $100 billion a year was extended to 2025 with a promise that before that date a new climate finance goal would be agreed.

- Promised v. delivered:


- Ratio border spending to climate financing:


- Border spending in the US 2013 - 2018 in million dollars:


- The true disparities between government spending on border and immigration enforcement and on climate finance is likely wider than these estimates, as the scope of the research and the lack of transparent data limits a full count. Expenditure on border and immigration controls is tied up in many budgets and agencies that could not be assessed. *For the US, for example, we combined the budgets of Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), but left out the Coast Guard, and various programmes managed by the Department of Defense and the Department of State that finance border-related issues, including externalisation programmes across the world as these were harder to extrapolate from published figures.*

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## Climate Migration in Latin America

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## The World

- [...] by 2070 one to three billion people are projected to live outside climate conditions that have sustained human life for 6,000 years. [...] in a ‘business as usual’ climate scenario, one third of the planet that is currently inhabited, the mean annual temperature will rise to an unbearable 29°C. [...] right now 1% of the earth’s surface is a ‘barely liveable hot zone. By 2070 that could go up to 19%’.

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