Climate change will
displace millions in coming decades. Nations should prepare now to help them
Pakistani commuters travel on a flooded street following a
heavy rainfall in Karachi, Aug. 31, 2017.
AP Photo/Shakil Adil
Author Gulrez Shah
Azhar
Ph.D. Candidate, Pardee RAND Graduate School
Gulrez Shah Azhar does not work for, consult, own shares in
or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from
this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic
appointment.
Wildfires tearing across Southern California have forced
thousands of residents to evacuate from their homes. Even more people fled
ahead of the hurricanes that slammed into Texas and Florida earlier this year,
jamming highways and filling hotels. A viral social media post showed a flight-radar
picture of people trying to escape Florida and posed a provocative question:
What if the adjoining states were countries and didn’t grant escaping migrants
refuge?
By the middle of this century, experts estimate that climate
change is likely to displace between 150 and 300 million people. If this group
formed a country, it would be the fourth-largest in the world, with a
population nearly as large as that of the United States.
Yet neither individual countries nor the global community
are completely prepared to support a whole new class of “climate migrants.” As
a physician and public health researcher in India, I learned the value of
surveillance and early warning systems for managing infectious disease
outbreaks. Based on my current research on health impacts of heat waves in
developing countries, I believe much needs to be done at the national, regional
and global level to deal with climate migrants.
The U.S. government is spending US$48 million to relocate
residents of Isle de Jean Charles, Louisiana, because their land is sinking.
Millions displaced yearly
Climate migration is already happening. Every year
desertification in Mexico’s drylands forces 700,000 people to relocate.
Cyclones have displaced thousands from Tuvalu in the South Pacific and Puerto
Rico in the Caribbean. Experts agree that a prolonged drought may have
catalyzed Syria’s civil war and resulting migration.
Between 2008 and 2015, an average of 26.4 million people per
year were displaced by climate- or weather-related disasters, according to the
United Nations. And the science of climate change indicates that these trends
are likely to get worse. With each one-degree increase in temperature, the
air’s moisture-carrying capacity increases by 7 percent, fueling increasingly severe
storms. Sea levels may rise by as much as three feet by the year 2100,
submerging coastal areas and inhabited islands.
The Pacific islands are extremely vulnerable, as are more
than 410 U.S. cities and others around the globe, including Amsterdam, Hamburg,
Lisbon and Mumbai. Rising temperatures could make parts of west Asia
inhospitable to human life. On the same day that Hurricane Irma roared over
Florida in September, heavy rains on the other side of the world submerged
one-third of Bangladesh and eastern parts of India, killing thousands.
Climate change will affect most everyone on the planet to
some degree, but poor people in developing nations will be affected most
severely. Extreme weather events and tropical diseases wreak the heaviest
damage in these regions. Undernourished people who have few resources and
inadequate housing are especially at risk and likely to be displaced.
People displaced by drought in Somalia queue to register at
a refugee camp in neighboring Ethiopia, July 26, 2011. UK-DFID, CC BY
Recognize and plan for climate migrants now
Today the global community has not universally acknowledged
the existence of climate migrants, much less agreed on how to define them.
According to international refugee law, climate migrants are not legally
considered refugees. Therefore, they have none of the protections officially
accorded to refugees, who are technically defined as people fleeing
persecution. No global agreements exist to help millions of people who are
displaced by natural disasters every year.
Refugees’ rights, and nations’ legal obligation to defend
them, were first defined under the 1951 Refugee Convention, which was expanded
in 1967. This work took place well before it was apparent that climate change
would become a major force driving migrations and creating refugee crises.
Under the convention, a refugee is defined as someone
“unable or unwilling to return to their country of origin owing to a
well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion,
nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion.”
The convention legally binds nations to provide access to courts, identity
papers and travel documents, and to offer possible naturalization. It also bars
discriminating against refugees, penalizing them, expelling them or forcibly
returning them to their countries of origin. Refugees are entitled to practice
their religions, attain education and access public assistance.
In my view, governments and organizations such as the United
Nations should consider modifying international law to provide legal status to
environmental refugees and establish protections and rights for them. Reforms
could factor in the concept of “climate justice,” the notion that climate
change is an ethical and social concern. After all, richer countries have
contributed the most to cause warming, while poor countries will bear the most
disastrous consequences.
The low-lying Pacific island nation of Kiribati is extremely
vulnerable to climate-driven sea level rise and storm surges. DFAT, CC BY
Some observers have suggested that countries that bear major
responsibility for greenhouse gas emissions should take in more refugees.
Alternatively, the world’s largest carbon polluters could contribute to a fund
that would pay for refugee care and resettlement for those temporarily and
permanently displaced.
The Paris climate agreement does not mention climate
refugees. However, there have been some consultations and initiatives by
various organizations and governments. They include efforts to create a climate
change displacement coordination facility and a U.N. Special Rapporteur on
Human Rights and Climate Change.
It is tough to define a climate refugee or migrant. This
could be one of the biggest challenges in developing policies.
Short-term actions
Negotiating international agreements on these issues could
take many years. For now, major G20 powers such as the United States, the
European Union, China, Russia, India, Canada, Australia and Brazil should
consider intermediate steps. The United States could offer temporary protected
status to climate migrants who are already on its soil. Government aid programs
and nongovernment organizations should ramp up support to refugee relief
organizations and ensure that aid reaches refugees from climate disasters.
In addition, all countries that have not signed the United Nations
refugee conventions could consider joining them. This includes many developing
countries in South Asia and the Middle East that are highly vulnerable to
climate change and that already have large refugee populations. Since most of
the affected people in these countries will likely move to neighboring nations,
it is crucial that all countries in these regions abide by a common set of
policies for handling and assisting refugees.
The scale of this challenge is unlike anything humanity has
ever faced. By midcentury, climate change is likely to uproot far more people
than World War II, which displaced some 60 million across Europe, or the
Partition of India, which affected approximately 15 million. The migration
crisis that has gripped Europe since 2015 has involved something over one
million refugees and migrants. It is daunting to envision much larger flows of
people, but that is why the global community should start doing so now. TOMADO DE ENVIO DE THE CONVERSATION
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