The discourse of climate migration: Unravelling the politics of ASEAN’s environmental policies

Abstract

Climate change has inevitably created impacts globally ranging from regulatory changes to affecting social communities. Among these impacts, climate migration becomes the unprecedented and significant one. Millions of migrants are environmentally displaced and the Southeast Asia region is noted as one critical hotspot of the movement. This issue presents challenges for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) as there is a need to enlighten and signify the urgency of the problem, knowing that climate-induced migration is still under-discussed within the regional body’s policy-making. Thus, this article aims to analyse why climate migration is under-discussed in ASEAN’s environmental policies and how the ASEAN regional framework lacks preparation to overcome challenges coming from climate change primarily on the issue of climate migration. In doing so, qualitative research method and discourse analysis will be used with data collection obtained from publications, academic journals, articles, and official reports. This article found that environmental communication and climate politics are the main elements that construct the discourse of climate migration within the policy-making of ASEAN. Moreover, a reflection on the discourse of climate migration in other regions such as the Pacific will be delivered.

Keywords

• ASEAN
• climate migration
• climate geopolitics
• climate refugees
• environment
• environmental communication