A Marshallese politician has pointed out that climate change migration in a similar aspect is like cultural genocide.
The Marshall Islands Foreign Minister, Tony de Brum, made this comment before the meeting of small Pacific atoll nations that will be held this week in Kiribati. The meeting, which is organised with the help of Prince Albert of the Monaco Foundation, will have its main agenda based on ways to prepare for climate change migrants to move in a dignified way and labour mobility as a potential mechanism to facilitate climate migration.
The Minister also stated that migration should only be seen as an option after all other avenues have failed.
“Displacement of populations and destruction of cultural language and tradition is equivalent in our minds to genocide. People must know that climate change can be reversed if we do it now. But if we do not of irreversible damage or and even catastrophic ending of civilisation as we know it,” the Foreign Minister said.
