Afua Hirsch: Politicians looking to blame others for migration should look at themselves

One of my family’s names comes from a river. It carves through one of the lushest landscapes in a lush country – Ghana’s semi-deciduous rainforest. It’s land that has inspired centuries of divine pantheons and persistent wisdom, shaded by high canopy trees, framed by rolling hills and plateaus of ancient uplands. Change is nothing new there, it has witnessed the rise and fall of kingdoms for centuries.

But the last time I visited, reporting on illegal gold mining, the river had turned a colour no natural water should ever be. A muddy, metallic yellow, brown from the churn of heavy sediments dredged up by miners, metallic from the mercury dumped into the water table by the industrial extraction of gold. Fish – the major source of protein, income and trade for local groups living along it – floated on the surface.

The trauma of this sight prompted the first documentary I ever made – an investigation into the activities of Chinese gold miners illegally cutting down forests in this once ecologically pristine land. It prompted, rightly, outrage towards these groups. But behind them, is a bigger story, one whose irony is almost impossible to believe.

Ghanaians are among the rising number of Africans migrating to Europe, often undertaking lethal crossings. By 2050, one billion people are expected to be displaced globally due to natural disasters, while climate breakdown threatens to make one-fifth of the world functionally uninhabitable by 2070. A huge portion of the world’s population will have no choice but to move.

We can already so clearly see the push factors across many of Britain’s former colonies. The devastating floods in Pakistan, striking the country’s most agriculturally crucial areas, creating food insecurity. The widespread deforestation in the Solomon islands, conducted at 19 times the sustainable rate, destroying topsoil and creating ever more dependence on imported foods. Last year’s landslides in Kerala, southern India, were triggered by extreme rain from a warming Arabian sea, which exposed the vulnerability of lands that were cleared by the British, to establish tea and coffee plantations during the Raj.

Survivors of these events become migrants, within their own countries, and abroad. Those who head to Europe will find that not all movement from their countries is unwelcome. The UK is content to earn billions from poorer nations through resource extraction, trade, investment, and debt recovery. But while capital’s free movement is protected at all costs, people face lethal risks to cross borders that are increasingly policed with militarised force. In defence, security, surveillance and detention, business is booming.

The most cynical part of this reality is that many of the individuals profiting handsomely from this global distress are funding the politics of cruelty towards migrants caught up in it.

Take for example Graham King, AKA The Asylum King, owner of Clearsprings. His company is one of the major contractors placing refugees in hotels – a misnomer that obscures the reality of sometimes squalid and often unsuitable accommodation. In 2024 King’s fortune jumped 35%, helping him enter the Sunday Times Rich List as a newly minted billionaire. That income has also enabled King to donate to the Conservative Party, which in turn has consistently targeted immigrants in the UK.

Another example is Christopher Harborne, the crypto billionaire whose £9m donation to Reform UK last year was the biggest ever gift to a British political party. Among Harborne’s many investments are stakes in the major defence technology company QinetiQ, which makes millions selling the drones, sensors and surveillance tech used to militarise borders and stop crossings in small boats.

These profits fund politics that consistently obscure the truth about migration. Instead of acknowledging migrants as the survivors of climate collapse – fuelled by the global north, which is responsible for 92% of excess global emissions – these political parties emphasise “overpopulation” and “opportunism” in the global south. Merged with persistent cultures of racial demonisation, colonial narratives about the threat to “civilisation” from a migrant “other”, we are experiencing nothing less than eco-fascism: the extreme politics of hate weaponised to blame those most affected by the problems we have caused.

The realities of climate survival are becoming harder to ignore. I was in Los Angeles earlier this year when catastrophic fires broke out in three areas surrounding the city, destroying over 57,500 acres of land, more than 18,000 homes and structures, displacing over 200,000 people and killing dozens. After an estimated $40bn in insurance losses, many homeowners in the city now find that their homes are uninsurable.

It’s hard to relate Los Angeles today to the one described by the Los Angeles Times in 1914: “No place on Earth offers greater security to life and greater freedom from natural disasters.” As Mike Davis wrote in the seminal Ecologies of Fear, the idea that western construction and desire can overcome natural ecosystems, meets its limits on the American continent.

Countries most affected by climate change and migration are experiencing the flip side of this equation. Western construction and desire has actively destroyed their natural ecosystems. In Syria, the years preceding the conflict saw the worst drought in 500 years. In the Sahel, decreased rainfall and desertification is fuelling terrorism in northern Nigeria, Chad, Mali and Burkina Faso. In the Caribbean, rising sea temperatures are increasing the intensity and frequency of devastating hurricanes.

That their populations are destined to flee, should be the tragedy that consumes us. But our politics ensures that is only the beginning. Migrants who seek survival in the UK will then witness their plight used to fuel a political ideology that turns them into the threat, and us into the victims. It’s time we acknowledged just how deliberate a strategy that is.