Climate change is amongst the most challenging issues humanity has ever faced. It is best seen as a threat multiplier that worsens existing instability, tensions, and trends. This phenomenon is also a catalyst not only for many natural disasters i.e. floods, droughts, wildfires, etc. but also for many social and security consequences that people will have to face such as displacement from their homes. From the melting of ice caps that triggers rising sea levels which in turn increases the threat of catastrophic flooding to changes in weather patterns that pose a threat to food production. Due to the irreparable effects of climate change, many families and communities have no choice but to leave their homes in search of newer or better opportunities. Such displaced people can be known as ‘climate refugees’ or also called ‘climate migrants.’
The consequences of climate change are unprecedented in scale and global in scope. Climate change has been proven to make hot areas hotter and wet areas wetter. This in turn is what leads to change in various regions often leading to extreme weather patterns and an increase in the intensity of natural disasters. The amalgamation of water expansion as the ocean has warmed and the melting of land ice into the oceans has driven sea level up about seven inches since 1900, and the rise is accelerating. The World Bank concluded in March 2018 that (amongst other reasons) rising sea levels could potentially displace 143 million people by the year 2050. The report deduced that he poorest and most climate-vulnerable areas will be the hardest hit.
Rising temperatures impacted by climate change means that changing temperatures will disrupt the natural flow of an ecosystem. The worldwide drought had been linked to unusually warm waters in the Indian Ocean and the western Pacific, which many scientists believed to be caused by global warming. The ever increasing drier and hotter conditions are contributing to the number of bushfire incidents taking place. These higher drought and wildfire inducing temperatures also lead to food and shelter insecurity. The eventual by-product is another set of climate refugees. Since 2008, an average of 24 million people have been displaced by catastrophic weather disasters each year as per the statistics published by the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre.
Unfortunately, the international response to such refugees has been inadequate with virtually zero rights or protections allocated to such communities or people. Although climate refugees are now recognized in the 2018 global compact on safe, orderly and regular migration, there still exist immense gaps in terms of adequate recognition and rights of such people. This is mainly because climate refugees aren’t under any clear definition as a category covered by the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees (the 1951 Refugee Convention). It basically encompasses people who have a well-founded fear of being persecuted on the grounds related to race, religion, nationality or membership of a particular social group or political opinion, and are unable or unwilling, due to a threat of persecution, to seek protection within the home country.
The problem therein lies that such a definition cannot apply to those people displaced due to climate change, as environmental degradation is not the same as ‘persecution’ as per the sense which it is used in the Refugee Convention. Such persecution would also need to be linked to one of the grounds set out in the convention. Therefore, environmentally induced displacement falls outside the scope of the 1951 Refugee Convention and its additional protocol. This means, for instance, that the estimated 200,000 Bangladeshis who become homeless each year due to river-bank erosion, cannot easily appeal for resettlement in another country. It also means that the residents of the small islands of Kiribati, Nauru and Tuvalu, where one in ten persons has migrated within the past decade, cannot be classified as refugees, even though those who remain are ‘trapped’ in worsening environmental conditions.
Therefore, the sad fact is that despite the startling effects of climate change and the even-more startling numbers reflecting the number of people being displaced due to such effects, there is no actual legal status of climate change refugees. In fact, such communities or families that do not have adequate resources to combat the ill effects of climate change also do not have adequate legislative processes or policies for their protection. Their situation is such that they have suffered disproportionate losses and eventually end up becoming ‘climate victims’ with no way out of their dire plight.
References used to draft this article:
Truthout. (2019, January 2). 10 Worst-Case Climate Predictions if We Don’t Keep Global Temperatures Under 1.5 Degrees Celsius. Retrieved from EcoWatch: https://www.ecowatch.com/worst-case-climate-predictions-2624959003.html
Wang, D. J., & Chameides, D. B. (2005). Global Warming’s Increasingly Visible Impacts. New York: Environmental Defense.
McDonnel, Tim. (2018, June 20). The Refugees the World Barely Pays Attention To. Retrieved from NPR: https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2018/06/20/621782275/the-refugees-that-the-world-barely-pays-attention-to
