No Such Thing as a Climate Refugee*

*strictly speaking

In November 2017, during the UNFCCC talks in Bonn, Germany, the New Zealand minister for climate change, proposed a special refugee visa for environmental refugees. Surrounded by low, lying pacific islands and inhabited atolls, New Zealand is a primary witness to the rising of the sea levels and the influence it has on the countries surrounding it. Thinking a couple of steps ahead, the government has prepared the exodus, before the water is up to their necks, figuratively speaking that is. [1]

Small Island Developing States, or ‘SIDS’, such as the Marshall Islands, Tuvalu, or the Maldives have been on the front row witnessing the first effects of climate change. The former Maldives president Mohammed Nasheed even held an underwater cabinet meeting to bring attention to the expiry date of his county. [2] Having your country literally disappear due to rising sea levels and frequent hurricanes might be the most extreme outcome of climate change for a country, it will not be the main source of climate refugees in the future. Drought, hunger, increased conflict, and extreme weather will most likely be at the basis for the largest migration streams in the near future. What will environmentally induced migration look like, and what challenges does it pose for Humanitarian Law?

What is climate Migration?

Climate migration as a political term speaks for itself. It is, however, very broad in its definition. When a country is literally swallowed by the ocean, it is very clear how that country has become unliveable and some sort of refugee status ought to apply. Most future climate refugees will not be in that group, however. Drought, food shortages, extreme weather and heat will be the main reason behind mass migration in the future.

The myriad of causes resulting in environmentally induced migration, led the UN to recognise the contribution of climate change to other causes of forced migration. During COP 25, the UN High Commission on Refugees (UNHCR) and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) launched a task force to head the international legal issues relating to the crossroads between climate change and forced displacement.[3] The task force mainly recognised that ‘climate, environmental degradation and natural disasters increasingly interact with drivers of refugee movements’.

The most important word in that assertion surely is ‘increasingly’. Current estimations state that around 26 million people are displaced every year due to natural disasters, since 2008.[4] That number has been on the rise for decades. [4] Forecasts from the International Organisation for Migration predict anywhere from 25 million to 1 billion environmentally displaced persons by 2050, while the UNHCR and other experts predict around 250 million by the middle of the century. [5]

Threat Multiplier

Two important side notes to these predictions would be in place, and are important in sketching an accurate picture of environmentally induced migration: Firstly, most of these environmentally displaced persons will migrate within country borders, and not internationally. This might therefore not be as visible on the international stage, but puts stress on certain areas and countries, nonetheless.

Secondly, a lot of migrants or even refugees under the 1951 Geneva Convention, are somewhat a result of climate change. Although it is still a matter of frequent debate, there are clear links to climate change and the Syrian Revolution, which led to 13,2 million refugees as recognised by the UN in 2016. The 5 years prior to the Syrian Revolution were some of the driest in recorded history. One expert put is as follows: ‘(...) this may be the worst long-term drought and most severe set of crop failures since agricultural civilisations began in the Fertile Crescent many millennia ago.’[6] This was the case for 60% of Syrian arable land. According to a special case study, nearly 75% of farmers suffered total crop failure, and 85% of livestock.

The result was somewhat predictable: mass internal migration to the Syrian cities, where in addition to hundreds of thousands of people, archaic ideals also made their way in.[7] In its role of causing an international refugee wave, it is clear to see how the distinction between internal and international forced migration is difficult to draw in some cases.

To claim that this was the sole cause of the Syrian Revolution would be ignorant, and flagrantly dismissing the ongoing Arab Spring, stress from previous refugee streams coming from the US invasion of Iraq, and the presence of a ruthless dictatorial regime. However, one can see the presence of climate change and environmental degradation in various cases of social and civil unrest. Another example is the disruption climate change caused in the Lake Chad Basin, where drought-induced instability and poverty exacerbated the efficacy of Boko Haram to destabilise the region further.[8]

This is why the UN and the EU consider climate change as a ‘threat multiplier’.[9] Monique Barbut, former Executive Secretary of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) stated that by the year 2035, 60 million people could migrate to North Africa and Europe due to desertification causing situations as above mentioned. Compared to this, the refugee ‘crisis’ Europe has dealt with since 2011 is next to nothing.

No such thing as a climate refugee

One of the questions both the EU and the wider world will have to deal with, is how to label these environmental migrants. Climate refugees are not recognised as a term in international law, or by the European Union. However, academic literature has defined environmentally induced migration in a myriad of ways. The most popular definition is from the hand of UNEP researcher Essam El-Hinnawi; [10]

‘...those people who have been forced to leave their traditional habitat, temporarily or permanently, because of a marked environmental disruption (natural and/or triggered by people) that jeopardized their existence and/or seriously affected the quality of their life’.

Although the forceful nature of the migration would seem like it could qualify it to be a form of refugee status, it does not qualify as such. The strict definition of a refugee is;[11]

‘(…) a person who owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality, and is unable to or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country.’

The individuality of the persecution implied in the definition is exactly the issue with putting environmental matters in the picture. Based on historic threats such as religious or gender persecution, the 1967 Protocol to the 1951 Refugee Convention does not cover the indiscriminate threat of environmental degradation. However, simply dropping the carefully construed definition will erode the concept of a refugee.

A simple solution to the legal status of environmentally induced migrants is therefore difficult to find. For now, they are still at the mercy of states willing to consider them as such. This is not a status quo that can be sustained, however. At some point, the logic of the international community ought to inverse from climate change being a threat multiplier, to climate change being an underlying cause for mass migration. The quicker we would reach this point, the quicker we could not only prepare for the coming migration waves, but also try to avert the worst-case scenarios concerning climate change through extensive mitigation efforts.