Climate change refugees seek a new international deal

Global warming caused by human-induced greenhouse gas emissions has been linked to a host of environmental disasters. These include sea-level rise, flooding, spells of droughts and cold and other extreme weather conditions such as frequent hurricanes and cyclones. As such natural catastrophes push inhabitants to flee to safer places, environmental refugees are fast becoming an international security issue.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimates that there will be 150 million environmental refugees by 2050. The Institute for Environment and Human Security, affiliated with United Nations University, estimated the number of environmental refugees at 20 million in 2005 and predicted the number could be 50 million as early as 2010.

In spite of millions in danger of becoming refugees, at present there is no international law to protect their rights. UNHCR, the United Nations’ refugee agency, does not recognise climate or environment refugees as these categories are not included in the list of legal refugees under the UN’s 1951 Refugee Convention. The Convention currently defines a legal refugee as a person who has fled his or her country due to persecution by the state for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion.

Anthony Simms, head of the climate change programme at UK-based New Economic Foundation, and the author of a book titled “Environmental Refugees: The Case for Recognition” argues that environmental refugees should be given UN refugee status as environmental displacement of people amounts to “environmental persecution”. Simms argues that developed nations should take responsibility as climate change comes a result of their policies.

UNHCR however says it does not want to expand the Refugee Convention to include climate refugees as that may reduce protection for the conventional political refugees.

Sources at UNHCR, who want to remain anonymous, add that UNHCR is not equipped or designed to handle hundreds of millions of refugees from climate change. It already finds its resources stressed in handling the 14.3 million political refugees in the world.

Clarifying UNHCR’s position, Yoichiro Tsuchida, UNHCR Senior Advisor on Climate Change, explains that the case for environment refugees is too complicated and disparate to fit within the current refugee framework. Justifying international migration due to natural disasters is difficult, as is the task of attributing environmental phenomena directly to climate change. "While environmental factors can contribute to prompting cross-border movements, they are not grounds, in and of themselves, for the grant of refugee status under international refugee law,” she says.

Tsuchida claims that "the broader international human rights regime" should serve as the basis for guiding the responsibility of states towards people who are in need of international protection but who do not qualify for refugee status.

International climate refugee pact

Conflict is brewing in within the UN over the recognition of this new brand of asylum seeker. Anthony Oliver-Smith, a Florida University professor and Munich Re Foundation chair at the United Nations University’s Institute of Environment and Human Security, says: “There is an urgent need for an internationally accepted definition of the term environment refugee.”

United Nations University, United Nations Environment Programme, International Organisation for Migration and Munich Re Foundation launched the Climate Change, Environment and Migration Alliance in October to bring migration issues into global climate change discussions.

Bangladesh and the Carteret Islands in Papua New Guinea already claim to have "climate change refugees". Over 500,000 inhabitants of Bhola Island in Bangladesh lost their home when the island was permanently submerged by floods in 2005. Most of these people now reside in the slums of Dhaka. Dhaka’s swelling slums have received a constant flow of migrants from the flood-prone coastal areas in the past few years. Some studies predict that the entire 144 million population of Bangladesh may become refugees by the turn of the century if the sea level keeps rising - putting unprecedented migration pressures on neighbouring India.

Scientists have estimated that the Papua New Guinean Carteret Islands, with a population of 10,000, will become fully submerged by 2015 due to global warming-induced sea level rise. In 2003, the Papua New Guinean government announced a planned relocation of the entire population of the islands but the programme was delayed for lack of funds. Last year, the government announced a new plan to begin the relocation.

Facing similar risks are the inhabitants of other low lying islands, with Tuvalu, Kiribati and the Maldives already identified at the highest risk. Tuvalu, an island state in the western pacific is expected to become uninhabitable by 2050 rendering its population of 10000 people stateless. Tuvalu needs to buy a piece of land or island from another nation to relocate its population but has not been able to find a seller so far.

Maldives’ recently elected president Mohamed Nasheed has said that he plans to buy land to relocate the entire country, which is due to disappear if sea level continues to rise. Maldives is the lowest lying nation on earth and most vulnerable to rise in the sea-level.

Political resistance

The IPCC has identified Small Island Developing States (SIDS), Africa, mega-deltas in Asia and the polar regions as potential hot-spots attracting the greatest wrath of climate change. The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) recognises SIDS, Africa and the Least Developed Countries as being particularly vulnerable.

Janos Bogardi, director of UNU’s Institute for Environment and Human Security (UNU-EHS) called for the issue of environmentally induced migration to be addressed in December's global climate change talks in Poznan, Poland. However, much of the focus of the conference remained on helping countries to contain the problem within their borders by implementing climate change adaptation measures such as flood control.

Professor Atiq Rahman, director of Bangladesh Centre for Advanced Studies and a member of the Nobel Prize winning IPCC, wants rich nations to open their doors for climate refugees.
He says that among other measures, a new mechanism should be introduced which will allow industrialised nations to swap their carbon emissions with climate refugees: “In future international agreements, carbon credits should be traded for climate refugees.”

Already wary of foreign immigrants, developed countries will find demands to accept climate refugees unpalatable. And in the developing world, accepting climate refugees also faces stiff opposition. India is fencing off Bangladesh by erecting a 2,500 mile long barbed barrier to prevent filtration of terrorists and illegal immigrants. The barrier will mean climate refugees from Bangladesh will not be able to flee to India unless an international treaty allowing for environmental refugees is endorsed by India.

“Future Floods of Refugees,” a report by Norwegian Refugee Council, one of the largest humanitarian organisations in Norway dedicated to global refugee issues, published a report in April 2008 advocating a new and separate international convention to protect the rights of climate refugees. It has also recommended a new international environment migration fund to be contributed by industrialised nations under what it calls “the polluter pays” principle.

A WWF UK study released on the sidelines of climate change talks in Poznan, said that the world may need a new UN pact to compensate victims of climate change or risk billion-dollar lawsuits linked to natural disasters caused by climate change.

The issue of climate refugees is starting to receive political recognition in the EU. The European Parliament adopted a declaration in June 2008 which sought to organise legal protection for the victims of climate events.

If the international community starts to seek solutions to the problem the legal definition of climate refugees will first need to be decided as well as their rights to shelter and food within their own country and in foreign countries, in the case of stateless refugees.

Unless progress is made on the international front, national governments in affected countries will feel increasing pressure to plan the relocation of their threatened communities, and developed nations will face growing demands to fund such relocations bilaterally, and perhaps even to offer their own land for resettlement.