”Environmental Migrants, a Wall in Between” is a multi-chapters documentary project, which explores how our modern society tends to build walls between people, populations, and nations. 2016 was the year with the most walls built in the history of mankind. In total there are almost 70 walls across the world today which no longer divide different ideologies, but the rich from the poor, those who escape from climate change and those who are responsible for it: in 1989, the year of the fall of the Berlin Wall, there were 15 walls worldwide.
A billion people could be forced to leave their homes and emigrate due to climate change by 2050. Already today, millions of environmental migrants embark on a journey that runs up against a barrier, built to confront the uncontrollable migrant influx that grows day after day, together with the barriers itself, due to climate change. Climate change, international migratory routes, border walls, and the humanity around them, represent the common thread binding together the stories in my documentary project.
The goal of my project is to document three key areas of this phenomenon: South America towards North America where climate change are expected to drive, only from Mexico, 1.4 million to 6.7 million people towards the United States by 2080 (source PNSA), Bangladesh towards India, where a barrier of around 3.4000 km is under construction, and then Africa/Asia towards Europe where some of the more recent border walls have been built.
According to the UN - by 2030 – more than 120 million people could be reduced to poverty due to the climate with the most severe impact in poor countries. Philip Alston, UN Special Representative on extreme poverty and human rights, says “We risk a ‘climate apartheid’ scenario where the wealthy pay to escape overheating, hunger, and conflict while the rest of the world is left to suffer”, on the other side of the border wall.