B1 · Intermediate
14 min
climatemigrationgeopoliticshistoryhuman rights
El Mediterráneo: Un Mar de Crisis Climática
The Mediterranean: A Sea of Climate Crisis
Fletcher breaks down this story in English. Octavio reacts and expands in Spanish. Follow along with the live transcript, tap any word for its translation. Intermediate level — perfect for intermediate learners expanding their range.
So there was a story in yesterday's news that I cannot stop thinking about.
Twenty-two bodies.
Recovered from a vessel drifting off the coast of Crete.
Twenty-six people rescued.
And survivors saying that some people were thrown overboard, on the orders of a trafficker, during the crossing.
Bueno, mira, esta historia es terrible.
Look, this story is terrible.
Pero también es muy normal, y eso es el problema.
But it's also very common, and that's the problem.
El Mediterráneo es el mar más peligroso del mundo para los migrantes.
The Mediterranean is the most dangerous sea in the world for migrants.
Cada año, muchas personas mueren en estas aguas.
Every year, many people die in these waters.
Right, and what I want to dig into today is the part of this story that doesn't make the headline.
Because when we talk about why people are making this crossing, climate change is increasingly part of that answer.
And I think most people don't fully understand how deep that connection goes.
La verdad es que yo pensé mucho en esto cuando leí la noticia.
The truth is I thought about this a lot when I read the story.
Estas personas no viajaron miles de kilómetros porque querían.
These people didn't travel thousands of kilometers because they wanted to.
Viajaron porque en sus países la vida era imposible.
They traveled because life in their home countries had become impossible.
Y el clima es una razón muy importante.
And climate is a very significant reason for that.
The detail that stopped me cold, I have to say, is the trafficker ordering people thrown overboard.
I covered a lot of dark stories in my career.
But there's something about the Mediterranean right now, the sheer scale of what's happening there, that feels like a civilizational failure.
Sí, es que el tráfico de personas es un negocio enorme.
Human trafficking is an enormous business.
Estas personas pagaron mucho dinero para cruzar el mar.
These people paid a lot of money to cross the sea.
Y el traficante tomó decisiones terribles para proteger su negocio.
The trafficker made terrible decisions to protect his operation.
Es un crimen, pero también es un síntoma de algo más grande.
It's a crime, but also a symptom of something much larger.
So let's start with the geography.
The route to Crete suggests these people were likely coming from Libya or possibly Turkey.
Which means they almost certainly started their journey much further south, in sub-Saharan Africa or the Horn of Africa.
That's an important detail.
Exacto.
Exactly.
Muchas personas empezaron su viaje en países como Eritrea, Somalia, Sudán, Mali o Senegal.
Many people begin their journeys in countries like Eritrea, Somalia, Sudan, Mali, or Senegal.
Viajaron por el desierto del Sahara, cruzaron Libia, y después intentaron cruzar el Mediterráneo.
They cross the Sahara desert, pass through Libya, and then attempt to cross the Mediterranean.
Es un viaje de meses, a veces de años.
It's a journey of months, sometimes years.
Here's what gets me.
When you look at the origin countries, practically every single one of them is on the frontline of climate change.
The Sahel, the Horn of Africa, the Great Rift Valley.
These are not coincidences.
A ver, esto es muy importante.
The Sahel is the vast region just south of the Sahara desert.
El Sahel es una región enorme al sur del desierto del Sahara.
Over the last fifty years, the Sahara has expanded significantly.
En los últimos cincuenta años, el Sahara creció mucho.
Large amounts of agricultural land turned to desert, and farmers lost everything they had.
Muchas tierras agrícolas se convirtieron en desierto.
Los agricultores perdieron todo.
I want to sit with that for a second.
The Sahara has grown by roughly ten percent since 1920.
That's an area the size of Texas.
Imagine telling a Texas farmer: your land is gone, it's desert now, sorry.
Bueno, y no es solo el desierto.
And it's not just the desert expanding.
En muchos países del Sahel, las lluvias llegaron tarde o no llegaron.
In many Sahel countries, rains arrived late or not at all.
Los ríos se secaron.
Rivers dried up.
Los animales murieron.
Animals died.
Cuando un agricultor no tiene agua, no tiene comida, no tiene dinero...
When a farmer has no water, no food, no income, what options are left?
¿qué puede hacer?
So the move to the city.
Which is the first step.
And then the city can't absorb everyone.
And then the move north.
This is a cascade, not a single event.
That's the part that gets lost when we talk about migration as if it's a policy problem with a policy solution.
Es que la migración no es nueva.
Migration is not new.
Las personas siempre se movieron cuando las condiciones fueron malas.
People have always moved when conditions became bad.
Pero ahora, el cambio climático creó condiciones peores en muchos lugares al mismo tiempo.
But now, climate change has created worse conditions in many places simultaneously, and the numbers are far larger than before.
El número de personas es mucho más grande que antes.
I want to bring up a number here, because I think it's genuinely staggering.
The World Bank projected that by 2050, without serious climate action, up to 216 million people could be displaced within their own regions by climate impacts alone.
Not war.
Not politics.
Climate.
Mira, ese número es difícil de imaginar.
That number is hard to imagine.
Doscientos dieciséis millones de personas.
Two hundred and sixteen million people is more than the entire population of Brazil.
Es más que la población de Brasil.
And many of those people will attempt to reach Europe or other regions with more stable climates.
Y muchas de esas personas van a intentar ir a Europa o a otros lugares donde el clima es mejor.
Now, look, I want to steelman the pushback here, because you hear this argument and it's not completely wrong.
Critics say: these people are also fleeing war, corruption, and poverty.
Climate is just one layer.
You can't call them climate refugees specifically.
La verdad es que eso es correcto, pero también es una trampa.
That argument is correct but also a trap.
El clima y la guerra y la pobreza están conectados.
Climate, war, and poverty are deeply interconnected.
Cuando hay sequía, hay menos comida.
When there is drought, there is less food.
Cuando hay menos comida, hay más conflictos.
When there is less food, conflicts intensify.
El clima hace todo más difícil.
Climate makes every other problem worse.
No, you're absolutely right about that.
The research is pretty clear.
There's a documented connection between the drought in Syria between 2006 and 2011, the displacement of farming communities into cities, and the political conditions that led to the civil war.
Climate was a multiplier.
Exacto.
And the Mediterranean itself has its own climate problem that many people overlook.
Y el Mediterráneo también tiene un problema climático propio, que mucha gente no sabe.
The Mediterranean is warming faster than the Atlantic Ocean, with temperatures rising significantly over the last fifty years.
El Mediterráneo se calienta más rápido que el océano Atlántico.
Las temperaturas subieron mucho en los últimos cincuenta años.
The extraordinary thing is the scale of it.
The Mediterranean is warming at about one and a half times the global average rate.
Scientists have called it a climate change hotspot.
Which means the destination countries, Europe, are also facing serious climate stress.
Bueno, en España lo vemos mucho.
In Spain this is very visible.
El sur de España, Andalucía y Murcia, tiene problemas muy graves con el agua.
Southern Spain, Andalusia and Murcia, faces serious water shortages.
Los embalses estuvieron casi vacíos.
Reservoirs have run nearly empty.
Los agricultores no tuvieron suficiente agua para sus cultivos.
Farmers have not had enough water for their crops.
Y España es un país rico.
And Spain is a wealthy country.
I spent time in Almería years ago doing a piece on greenhouse farming, and even then the water situation was alarming.
They were literally pumping out aquifers that took thousands of years to fill.
The math doesn't work.
A ver, y hay otro problema.
There is another layer: when climate conditions deteriorate in Spain, Italy, and Greece, economic pressure increases.
Cuando el clima en España y en Italia y en Grecia se hace más difícil, también hay más presión económica.
And politically, it becomes harder to support migrants when your own citizens are struggling.
Y políticamente, es más difícil ayudar a los migrantes cuando tus propios ciudadanos tienen problemas.
That's the political trap.
Climate change creates the migration pressure, and then climate change also erodes the political capacity to respond humanely.
You get a double bind.
The countries best positioned to help are themselves under stress.
Mira, y aquí hay un problema legal muy importante.
International law protects refugees fleeing war or political persecution.
En el derecho internacional, hay protección para los refugiados de guerra o de persecución política.
But there is no legal protection for climate refugees.
Pero no hay protección para los refugiados climáticos.
That category simply does not exist in international law.
No existe esa categoría en la ley.
Right, so the 1951 Refugee Convention.
Which was written in the aftermath of World War Two, when the framers were thinking about specific, identifiable persecution.
Nobody was thinking about a farmer in Mali whose land turned to dust over thirty years.
That's a different kind of crisis.
Es que la ley no cambió, pero el mundo cambió mucho.
The law did not change, but the world changed enormously.
Y eso significa que millones de personas que huyen del cambio climático no tienen ningún estatus legal.
This means millions of people fleeing climate change have no legal status.
Si las autoridades las atrapan en el mar, las pueden deportar.
If authorities intercept them at sea, they can be deported.
I want to bring in one more thread here.
Because I was struck by another story in yesterday's news.
The Dubai World Cup ran despite the Iran war.
An American horse won a twelve million dollar race while, a few hundred kilometers away, Iranian missiles hit Abu Dhabi.
Sí, Dubai es un símbolo muy interesante.
Dubai is a fascinating symbol.
Es una ciudad muy rica en el Golfo Pérsico, donde el calor en verano es extremo.
It is a very wealthy city in the Persian Gulf where summer temperatures reach 50 degrees Celsius.
Las temperaturas llegaron a 50 grados.
Yet they built indoor ski slopes and host horse racing in March.
Pero construyeron pistas de esquí bajo el techo y organizaron carreras de caballos en marzo.
The thing is, Dubai is essentially a climate adaptation experiment.
An enormously expensive one.
Air conditioning everything, desalinating water, growing food indoors.
And it works, if you have hundreds of billions of dollars in oil money.
Most of the world doesn't.
La verdad es que eso es el problema más importante.
That is the central problem.
Los países ricos pueden adaptarse al cambio climático con tecnología y dinero.
Wealthy countries can adapt to climate change with technology and money.
Los países pobres no pueden.
Poor countries cannot.
Y las personas que vivieron en esos países pobres tomaron un barco hacia Europa.
And the people living in those poor countries are the ones getting on boats to Europe.
So you have this almost obscene asymmetry.
The countries that contributed least to carbon emissions are bearing the heaviest cost.
And then they're treated as a security problem by the countries that caused most of the emissions.
That's the moral structure of this crisis.
Exacto.
A farmer in Senegal produced very little carbon dioxide in his lifetime.
Un agricultor en Senegal no produjo mucho dióxido de carbono en su vida.
But his land became desert because industrialized countries emitted enormous quantities of CO2 over a century.
Pero su tierra se convirtió en desierto porque los países industriales emitieron mucho CO2 durante cien años.
It is profoundly unjust.
Es injusto.
Es muy injusto.
Look, I covered the Copenhagen climate summit in 2009 and the debates about climate finance and compensation were already fierce then.
Seventeen years later, the Loss and Damage fund that was agreed at COP27 is still mostly empty.
The money was pledged.
It didn't arrive.
Bueno, los políticos hablan mucho en las conferencias.
Politicians speak at length in conferences.
Pero después, en sus países, es difícil gastar dinero en países lejanos cuando los ciudadanos tienen sus propios problemas.
But back home, spending money on distant countries is politically difficult when citizens have their own problems.
La política nacional siempre ganó a la política global.
National politics consistently wins over global commitments.
And that gap, between the promise and the reality, is partly why we have twenty-two bodies in the water off Crete.
I don't think that's an overstatement.
I think that's just the arithmetic of the situation.
A ver, y lo que me parece importante es que esto no va a parar.
What matters most is that this will not stop.
Las condiciones climáticas en África y en el Mediterráneo van a ser peores en los próximos años.
Climate conditions in Africa and across the Mediterranean region are projected to worsen in coming years.
Si no cambiamos las políticas, vamos a ver más barcos y más muertes.
Without policy changes, there will be more boats and more deaths.
So what would actually help?
I mean genuinely, not rhetorically.
Because I've covered enough of these crises to know that good intentions and bad policy often make things worse.
What does evidence-based climate migration policy actually look like?
Mira, los expertos hablan de tres cosas.
Experts point to three things: more funding for climate adaptation in origin countries, legal pathways for climate migrants, and a formal definition of climate refugee in international law.
Primero, más dinero para la adaptación climática en los países de origen.
Segundo, vías legales para la migración climática.
Y tercero, una definición legal de refugiado climático en el derecho internacional.
The third one is really the hard one politically.
Because defining climate refugees means accepting legal obligations.
And every government in Europe knows what that means for domestic politics.
It's a genuinely difficult problem, not a cynical one.
Es que es difícil, sí.
It is difficult, yes.
Pero las personas que murieron en ese barco cerca de Creta también merecen una respuesta mejor.
But the people who died in that boat near Crete deserve a better response.
No podemos decir solo que el problema es complicado y no hacer nada.
We cannot simply say the problem is complicated and do nothing.
La inacción también es una decisión.
Inaction is also a decision.
That's exactly right.
And I think what this story illustrates, what makes the Crete tragedy something more than just another headline, is that it's a preview.
Of a world where climate disruption, migration pressure, and political paralysis all arrive at the same moment.
Bueno, mira, para terminar quiero decir una cosa.
To close, I want to say this: the Mediterranean has always been a sea of encounter between cultures and civilizations.
El Mediterráneo fue siempre un mar de encuentro entre culturas y civilizaciones.
Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans, Arabs, all crossed this sea.
Los fenicios, los griegos, los romanos, los árabes, todos cruzaron este mar.
Now it is a cemetery.
Ahora es un cementerio.
That is a historical tragedy.
Eso es una tragedia histórica.
The sea that gave us civilization is now swallowing people who are fleeing the consequences of how we ran it.
I don't have a tidy ending for that.
I just think it's important to sit with.
Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next time.