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Climate Change and Refugees/ Human Crisis
There could be 1.2 billion climate refugees by 2050. Here’s what you need to know
Extreme weather, rising seas and damaged ecosystems could threaten the safety and livelihoods of billions of people. A collective effort is needed to find solutions to help climate change refugees: the “world’s forgotten victims” of climate change.
As the threat of climate change increases globally, it’s no surprise that living conditions are becoming more precarious around the world.
And climate change doesn’t just mean extreme weather – rising sea levels, damaged ecosystems and environmental changes are all adversely impacting people’s lives with the potential to cause massive upheaval on a global scale.
According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), an annual average of 21.5 million people have been forcibly displaced by weather-related events – such as floods, storms, wildfires and extreme temperatures – since 2008. These numbers are expected to surge in coming decades with forecasts from international thinktank the IEP predicting that 1.2 billion people could be displaced globally by 2050 due to climate change and natural disasters.
Who are climate refugees?
The term “climate refugees” has been used since 1985 when UN Environment Programme (UNEP) expert Essam El-Hinnawi defined climate – or environmental – refugees as people who have been “forced to leave their traditional habitat, temporarily or permanently, because of marked environmental disruption.” But the extent of the definition still causes some confusion.
When two category 4 hurricanes hit Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador in November 2020, people poured across the border into Mexico and headed towards the U.S. as torrential rains and landslides meant they lost their homes, livelihoods and access to clean water.
In this case, the cause and effect are clear. It is easy to see how unlivable conditions in their home countries caused by extreme weather led people to cross borders as climate refugees.
But Amar Rahman, Global Head of Climate Change Resilience Services at Zurich Insurance Group, believes the definition should apply to a much broader range of people, namely “anyone who has been impacted by disruption in their society that could somehow directly or indirectly be related to short- or long-term change in the environment.”
This means acknowledging that climate change does not just pose a threat by causing immediate harm to people and infrastructure, it is also a long-term danger that can slowly destabilize societies and economies, making them more vulnerable to other threats. Take for instance sea-level rise. Over the past 30 years, the number of people living in coastal areas at high risk of rising sea levels has increased from 160 million to 260 million, 90 percent of whom are from poor developing countries and small island states.
Rahman explains the situation is made worse as climate risks are interconnected and can cause a domino effect. “When temperatures rise in a country, for instance, it can reduce water availability and water quality. This may increase the spread of disease and raise the likelihood of drought leading to crop failures that will reduce incomes and food supplies.”
The correlation between conflict and climate crisis
This domino effect was felt in Syria, where the desertification of formerly fertile farming land between 2006 and 2010 meant crop yields were cut, 800,000 people lost their income and 85 percent of the country’s livestock died. As people lost their livelihoods, food prices soared, and 1.5 million rural workers moved to the city to find jobs. Those left behind facing poverty were an easy target for recruiters from the Islamic State.
These are not the only factors that led to the Syrian civil war, but in the context of the Arab Spring and increasingly strict restrictions from the Syrian government, societal issues caused by climate change worked to exacerbate existing tensions. The result was a conflict that fueled the world’s worst refugee crises in decades with around 6.6 million Syrians (roughly a quarter of the population) forced to flee their country.
The experience in Syria is sadly not unusual as there is a strong correlation between countries most vulnerable to climate change and those experiencing conflict or violence. According to the UNHCR’s report Global Trends in Forced Displacement 2020, 95 percent of all conflict displacements in 2020 occurred in countries vulnerable or highly vulnerable to climate change.
The good news is that international governments are starting to recognize climate migration as an issue that needs to be tackled. In November 2021, U.S. President Joe Biden released the Report on the Impact of Climate Change on Migration – the White House report represents the first time the U.S. Government has officially recognized a link between climate change and migration.
The report recognizes that climate migration can have significant implications for international security, instability, conflict, and geopolitics. And it calls for the development of strategies that would allow the humane, safe, and proactive management of climate migration flows.
What can be done to help climate refugees?
One way to tackle climate migration is by creating economic opportunity in societies threatened by environmental change. For example, in Bangladesh, cyclones causing floods have increased the salinity of 53 percent of farmland, meaning farmers are no longer able to grow their normal crops. This poses a deadly threat to communities who rely on agriculture to survive.
However, farmers have been able to adapt to the new conditions, with support from Dutch research project The Salt Solution and local NGOs who are teaching them to grow different crops that are better adapted to the soil, including potatoes, carrots, cabbages and coriander. So far 10,000 farmers have received training, resulting in two to three extra harvests per year.
Bangladesh is also now home to an estimated 950,000 Rohingya refugees from neighboring Myanmar, many of whom live in refugee camps. To prevent these political refugees becoming climate refugees, the UNHRC is working with local partners to plant fast-growing trees in parts of refugee camps that are prone to landslides during monsoon storms to stabilize the ground.
The White House report says that climate financing – from U.S. foreign aid and international financial institutions, for example – is key to support vulnerable communities to respond to, prepare for, and adapt to climate and migration risks. It urges the U.S. government to establish an interagency working group on climate migration to coordinate its efforts to address the challenge. It would oversee the drafting of U.S. policy, strategies and budgets to help those impacted by climate change and migration, either domestically or internationally.
Protected status for climate refugees
Finally, experts argue climate change refugees need access to the same protected status offered to other refugees such as those who have escaped conflict.
In March 2018, the UN Human Rights Council found that many people forced from their homes due to the effects of climate change do not fit the definition of ‘refugees’ and calls them “the world’s forgotten victims.” This means they cannot access legal protections to their human rights, which could protect them from threats like deportation.
To rectify this, governments and legal bodies must reframe conditions caused by climate change as a threat to human rights and recognize the deadly threat that climate refugees face – even if that threat is not always as immediate as the dangers faced by refugees fleeing war.
Even the White House report admits that current legal instruments to protect refugees “do not readily lend themselves to protect those individuals displaced by the impacts of climate change, especially those that address migration across borders.” One of its key legislative suggestions is for the U.S. to expand use of its migrant protection program known as Temporary Protected Status.
But the ultimate solution is to curtail climate change by achieving the goals set out in the Paris Agreement to limit temperature increase to well below 2 degrees Celsius (°C) and ideally to 1.5°C.
“We need to act collectively to manage this crisis,” says Rahman. “It’s requires a huge team effort starting from governments through to civil institutions, academia and companies. Even as individuals, we must carefully consider our responsibilities as consumers, voters and global citizens. Together we can have a big impact.”
Climate Change and Refugees/ Human Crisis
Climate refugees – the world’s forgotten victims
- Data on climate refugees – those forced to flee due to disasters and other weather events – is limited, which is why they’re called the “forgotten victims of climate change”.
- Australian think tank IEP predicts that at least 1.2 billion people could be displaced by such climate-related events by 2050.
- There is an urgent need to clarify the definition of climate change refugees, including comprehensive data on IDPs, and create an international mechanism to protect them.
As the global climate crisis worsens, an increasing number of people are being forced to flee their homes due to natural disasters, droughts, and other weather events. These people are sometimes called “climate refugees”. Who are these climate refugees? And how can the international community properly address this issue?
Who are climate refugees?
Today, many people in developing countries are suffering from droughts and windstorms on a scale never seen before, depriving them of daily food and basic needs. It is still fresh in our memories that last November many people from the Central American countries of Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador, which were hit by two massive hurricanes, poured across the border into Mexico and headed toward the US border.
The term “climate refugees” was first coined to describe the increasing large-scale migration and cross-border mass movements of people that were partly caused by such weather-related disasters.
In April, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) released data showing that the number of people displaced by climate change-related disasters since 2010 has risen to 21.5 million, pointing out that “in addition to sudden disasters, climate change is a complex cause of food and water shortages, as well as difficulties in accessing natural resources.”
Sea-level rise is another threat. Over the past 30 years, the number of people living in coastal areas at high risk of rising sea levels has increased from 160 million to 260 million, 90% of whom are from poor developing countries and small island states. For example, in Bangladesh it is predicted that 17% of the country will be submerged by the rise in sea level by 2050, and 20 million people living there will lose their homes.
The Ecosystem Threat Register (ETR) released in September 2018 by the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP), an Australian international think tank, points out that at least 1.2 billion people could be displaced by these threats by 2050. In this context, the international response to the problem has gradually begun to progress.
A global response
The Global Compact on Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration, adopted by the UN in 2018, clearly states that one of the factors causing large-scale movements of people is “the adverse impacts of climate change and environmental degradation,” which includes natural disasters, desertification, land degradation, drought and rising sea levels. For migrants who are forced to leave their countries of origin due to environmental degradation, the compact clearly states that governments should work to protect climate refugees in the countries of their arrival by devising planned relocation and visa options if adaptation and return is not possible in their countries of origin.
Earlier, in March 2018, the UN Human Rights Council adopted an outcome document that discussed the issue of cross-border movement of people brought about by climate crises from the perspective of human rights protection.
The document pointed out that there are many people who do not fit the definition of “refugees” among those who are forced to migrate long distances and cross borders due to climate impacts, and that the legal system to protect their human rights is inadequate, as the “non-refoulement principle”, which states that people who have crossed borders should not be deported or repatriated to their original countries against their will, is not applied. It then urged governments to “incorporate the concept of human rights protection into the planning and implementation of climate change measures,” including preventing large-scale displacement by allowing people to live in conditions that protect their human rights, and promoting human rights-conscious planned relocation as a means of adapting to climate change.
The decision made by the UN Commission on Human Rights in January 2018 also attracted a great deal of attention from those concerned.
Ioane Teitiota from Kiribati, an island nation in the South Pacific that is in danger of losing its land due to rising sea levels, applied for refugee status as a “climate refugee” with the New Zealand government, but his application was rejected and he was repatriated to Kiribati in 2015. In 2016, he filed a complaint with the UN Covenant on Civil Liberties, claiming that his right to life had been violated by the repatriation.
Although the Committee upheld the New Zealand government's decision, stating that Mr Teitiota was not facing an imminent threat to his life, it acknowledged that “the effects of climate change”, such as rising sea levels, “pose a serious threat to the right to life of people living in countries like Kiribati.” It concluded that national courts and others must take this into account when challenging the repatriation of migrants to their countries of origin. The decision held that people facing climate change impacts that violate their right to life cannot be repatriated to their country of origin. The decision has been hailed as “a decision that opens the door to climate change-related refugee claims.”
Government action
Governments are also becoming more aware of the issue. In 2015, just prior to the adoption of the Paris Agreement, the then-president of the European Union, Jean-Claude Juncker, stated in his policy speech: “Climate change is even one [of] the root causes of a new migration phenomenon. Climate refugees will become a new challenge – if we do not act swiftly,” he said, pointing out the importance of strengthening efforts. Discussions have also begun in the European Parliament.
In February, shortly after taking office, US President Joe Biden issued an executive order asking Jake Sullivan, assistant to the president for national security, to discuss with the relevant federal departments and agencies about formulating a position on how to identify climate refugees who have been displaced by climate change and what kind of protection and support the US government can provide to them. The report is expected to be submitted to the president in August.
However, it is hard to say that the international community and governments are doing enough to deal with climate change refugees, given the seriousness of the problem.
One of the reasons for this is the lack of a clear climate refugees definition, and the absence of international organizations and institutions to address and clarify the issue. Climate change refugees are not covered by the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, which protects people who have a well-founded fear of persecution on racial, religious or other grounds, nor are they eligible for protection under the Convention. Official data on climate refugees is virtually non-existent – this is why they are called the “forgotten victims of climate change.”
As the problem of climate change refugees worsens, there is an urgent need to clarify the definition of climate refugees, including comprehensive data on internally displaced persons (IDPs), and create an international mechanism to protect them. It may be desirable to further discuss how to tackle this issue under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.
Japan’s efforts fall short
Compared to many developed countries, Japan has not shown enough interest in the issue of climate refugees or awareness of the related idea of climate security. Moreover, Japan's refugee protection measures have long been pointed out to be inadequate. In terms of the number of people accepted, only 44 people were recognized as refugees in Japan in 2019. This is a far cry from Germany, which accepted 54,000 people in the same year.
As an Asian developed country where many people affected by the climate crisis live, it is urgent for Japan to seriously address the issue of climate refugees. Otherwise, Japan will face a major security risk posed by climate refugees and reputational risk in the not-too-distant future.
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