Parag Khanna is a leading global strategy advisor, world traveler, and best-selling author. He is Founder & Managing Partner of FutureMap, a data and scenario based strategic advisory firm. Parag’s newest book is Move – The Forces Uprooting Us, which was preceded by The Future is Asian – Commerce, Conflict & Culture in the 21st Century. Parag has been an adviser to the US National Intelligence Council’s Global Trends programme. He is a widely cited public intellectual and provides regular commentaries for international media.

KEY TAKE-AWAY
  • Climate adaptation barely featured at COP 26, yet it’s already happening and takes the form of migration.
  • But as physically preventing people from crossing its borders remains the last vestige of a state’s national sovereignty,there will never be a global schema governing freedom of movement.
  • Particularly in terms of climate migration the process will be bottom up, haphazard, messy and massive.
  • The only true barometer of solidarity in the face of climate change will be the number of climate migrants a country is prepared to take in – or not
  • In the face of climate devastation, there are perhaps two options:
    • Allowing and facilitating the movement of people to the resources or
    • Effective deployment of technology to where the people are so they can stay put and survive.
  • New vectors of movement are emerging, for example:
    • Spurred by programmes of political influence like the Belt and Road Initiative and labour shortages in most European countries South and Eastern Asians are moving towards the West, identifying as Asian Europeans.
  • Parag posits that “Demographics of youth is all that matters for the future.” The depopulation of some region has begun and with it a worldwide war for talent. As a result, the success or otherwise of a nation will be governed by a single metric: are they attracting people or are they losing them.
  • There is systematic overstatement of resistance to migration and underestimation of the influence and pressure exerted by supply and demand.
  • Take the example of Japan – historically one of the world’s most immigration averse and closed societies – is, in the face of an ageing population and severe labour shortages, opening-up. In an unprecedented move, it recently granted permanent Japanese residency status to 3 million migrant workers.
  • Despite all the rhetoric, even Trump’s America saw the numbers of Latinos and those identifying as mixed race reach an all-time high.
  • The economic and societal fallout from a brain drain vary from (origin) country to country. Demographics and education prevail: India is in a stronger position than Africa because she has a larger pool of young, educated talent to give before feeling any negative effects.