English Transcript

Cập nhật 27/07/2008 19:36:00

On the day the Australian Government has released its green paper on climate change, the World Bank is warning future climate change refugees present the government with a major policy challenge.

Presenter: Karon Snowdon; Speakers: Dr Dilip Ratha, Senior Economist at the WB and the Manager of its Migration Division.

SNOWDON: The many scientific papers on the topic tell us that even small rises in sea levels will affect the lives of millions. The changes include the flooding of land, less food production, more disease and risks to biodiversity.

But information on how many people will have to migrate to a new country, and which one, is less well researched.

RATHA: Yes I think there is definitely a sense of urgency about beginning to gather information. There is too much ignorance on this topic.

SNOWDON: Dr Dilip Ratha is a Senior Economist at the WB working especially on migration. He says the most displaced will be from among the very poor, from Bangladesh, VN and the low lying Pacific islands.

RATHA: And most likely migration pressures will rise and that will not be pleasant.

SNOWDON: There's a sense of urgency being caused now because of climate change perhaps, with this whole area of economic migration is an ongoing one for this part of the world, for Pacific Islanders to New Zealand, to Australia. The Australian government for example is quite hesitant to expand labour mobility schemes. You've presented a lot of information showing how positive economic migration can be. How should the Australian government perhaps be reviewing its position in your mind?

RATHA: Australia has a very large official aid effort but migration is also beneficial for development so I see that Australia needs to think about its development efforts in a consistent manner and not think of aid policy as being different from migration policy and that being different from trade policy and that being different from investment policies, because these are linked. What I would like to highlight is that migration is more or less a very potent force for development back at home in the countries of origin through remittances, which tend to be several times of the size of official aid. They have significant impacts on poverty reduction, on employment generation, on creating educated people and providing health care and creating small business investments.

SNOWDON: The popular view is that the world is awash with migrants. The WB's data however show that just 3% of the global populace chooses to move, as a rule people do so reluctantly and in almost every case it's to find a job and support families at home.

It's an important source of income for nations - for example representing more than 30% of GDP for Tonga and several Central Asian nations. Critics of migration often point to fears of a floodgate of migrants, of problems of money laundering through channels used to remit money or the funding of terrorist activities through the informal sector.

Dr Dilip Ratha believes such concerns vastly overstate the problems and he rejects calls for more regulation.

RATHA: There is a bit of overreaction to the anecdotal finding, the occasional finding that the alternative remittance chanells are sometimes associated with money laundering or with some financial crime.

SNOWDON: Instead he recommends policymakers look at ways to make sending money home easier and less costly. It costs between 25 and 35 dollars to transfer 200 dollars from Australia or New Zealand to anywhere else, while money transfers between poor countries can cost even more.

RATHA: If we let the market to operate that would be the best way because remittances do provide a lifeline to a lot of poor people.