Review: Green Hour: “Should I stay or should I go now? Conflicting discourses on climate change and human mobility in international climate politics” (Prof. Dr. Angela Oels)

In many places of the world and increasingly so, rising sea levels, drought, and extreme weather events lead to the displacement of communities, migration, and planned relocation. During UN climate conferences COPs, such phenomena are often referred to as “human mobility in the context of climate change”—a description that suggests quasi-inevitable and voluntary individual and collective movement across regions and countries. In her presentation, Prof. Dr. Angela Oels cast a critical look at the discourse of mobility during COPs conferences. What she and her team want to find out, in the end, is how this (and other) dominant discourses are used to legitimize specific government policies instead of recognizing populations’ right to stay and maintaining political sovereignty with financial help from industries that contribute most to climate change.

written by Kirsten Twelbeck