Sonia Shah

So what happens?

Well, they wait for a disaster, right?

A big storm comes or a dust storm, dust bowl happens or something like that happens and then everyone has to move all at once.

And you have these mass movements that are the most disruptive of all.

So by not creating those avenues beforehand, we actually are making migration more disruptive.

And I think, in fact, what we're seeing right now is that there are enough political regimes that find disruptive migration to be a good problem to have because this is something they can crack down on.

They can make it look like they're really doing something.

And it takes everyone's attention away from the actual underlying problems, which are really quite difficult to solve.

I think we might see some broad, like right now we're seeing about 80% of other species are on the move.

They're moving into new places and that's in sync with the changing climate.

They're moving into higher latitudes or moving higher up into higher altitudes.

And that is so that they can stay within the climates that they are adapted to.

So, you know, that's not how humans are moving yet.

But I think it takes time.

And I think right now we have a lot of barriers, political barriers that say, well, you can't move for this reason and you can't move here and you can't move there.

But if we were to sort of start to overcome some of that, and I think policy works to some extent to deter migration.

We have more walls on international borders today than at any time.

It has more of a deflecting effect than a deterrent effect.

People still want to move and they still will move.

It's like throwing a boulder in a stream, right?