Climate refugee

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This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. Please improve this article if you can. (August 2009)

A climate refugee is a person who is forced to relocate, either to a new country or to a new location within their home country, due to global warming related environmental disasters. Such disasters may be evidence of human-influenced ecological change and disruption of Earth's climate system, primarily through the emissions of greenhouse gases, although other natural factors may also play a role. Humankind may have drastically altered the chemical composition of the global atmosphere, with profound implications for climate.^[1]

Such disturbances can result in increased droughts, desertification, sea level rise, and disruption of seasonal weather patterns. A statistically significant correlation between migration and environmental degradation including climate change was shown by Afifi and Warner (2007), controlling for the already established major drivers of migration.^[2]

The inhabitants of the Carteret Atoll recently became some of the world's first climate refugees.

[edit] Definition

Climate refugees are often classified as environmental refugees. Some consider climate refugees to be a subcategory of environmental refugees. Recently, the United Nations agreed to use the term "Environmentally Induced Migrants". A paper by Renaud, Bogardi, et al. (2007) posed a conceptual framework to understand different categories of people on the move in response to environmental disruptions including climate change.^[3]

The use of the term "refugee" itself is controversial, the main concern being that use of the term "refugee" for climate or environment-related displacement could detract from those people protected under the 1951 Geneva convention (which protects political refugees from persecution) (see Dun, Gemenne, and Stojanov 2007 for further discussion)^[4]. No central tally is kept by the United Nations of either classification. In the World Disasters Report 2001[1] published by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, more people are now forced to leave their homes because of environmental disasters than war. They estimate approximately 25 million people could currently be classified as being environmental refugees.^[5]

[edit] First use of the term

The term "Climate Refugee", should be considered within discussions of "environmental refugees". Although much more popular now, this term was first used as far back as the 1980s, see El-Hinnawi (1985), Jacobson (1988), and Tickell (1989). El-Hinnawi wrote, "environmental refugees are people who have been forced to leave their traditional habitat, temporarily or permanately, because of a marked environmental disruption (natural and/or triggered by people) that jeopardised their existence and/or seriously affected the quality of their life".

Discussions about the ambiguity of the term "environmental" were also debated. For example, the suggestion that the term "environmental refugee" can be separated from political, economic, and environmental causes of migration. Alternatively, the term "climigrant" has been used to describe people who specifically move due to changes in climate.^[6]. The term "climate exile" has been used to refer to those whose states and therefore membership in political societies may be at risk specifically as a result of climate change^[7].

[edit] Media

In the documentary Climate Refugees, filmmaker Michael Nash illuminates the mass global migration of humans caused by our changing climate, what the film calls "the human face of climate change". The film also examines the link between our changing climate and national security. Climate Refugees travels the globe interviewing scholars, politicians and victims, including Lester R. Brown, immigration policy advisor Tino Cuellar, Newt Gingrich, Rajendra K. Pachauri, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi , Senator John Kerry, Secretary of Interior Ken Salazar, Stephen Schneider, Norman Myers, Janos Bogardi, Yvo de Boer, Koko Warner, Gov. Bill Ritter Jr., Achim Steiner, and Bjorn Lomborg.^{[citation needed]} Since 2007, German artist Hermann Josef Hack has shown his World Climate Refugee Camp in the centers of various European cities. The model camp, made of roughly 1000 miniature tents, is a public art intervention that depicts the social impacts of climate change.^[8]

[edit] Predictions

Professor Norman Myers of Oxford University has estimated climate change will increase the number of environmental refugees six-fold over the next fifty years to 150 million. The UN University's Institute for Environment and Human Security predicts that by 2010, there will be 50 million 'environmentally displaced people', most of whom will be women and children.^[9] Australian climate scientist Dr. Graeme Pearman has predicted that a 2°C rise in temperature would place 100 million people 'directly at risk from coastal flooding' by 2100. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), has suggested 150 million environmental refugees would exist by 2050. Because the actual phenomena of climate change affecting human movement has not yet been empirically, systematically addressed, the European Commission funded a research project "Environmental Change and Forced Migration Scenarios (EACH-FOR)" to investigate, measure, and create scenarios for future environmental change. The project undertakes 24 case studies worldwide with a unified methodology, and will report its findings throughout 2008 (www.each-for.eu).^[10].

[edit] Campaigns

The Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF) has argued that the people who will be forced to move due to climate change currently have no adequate recognition in international law. ^[11] The EJF contends that a new multilateral legal instrument is required to specifically address the needs of ‘climate refugees’ in order to confer protection to those fleeing environmental degradation and climate change.^[12] They have also asserted that additional funding is needed to enable developing countries to adapt to climate change. Sujatha Byravan and Sudhir Chella Rajan have argued for the use of the term 'climate exiles' and for international agreements to provide them political and legal rights, including citizenship in other countries, bearing in mind those countries' responsibilities and capabilities.^[13][14]

[edit] The first climate refugees

Across Africa desertification and a consequent decline in agricultural output is displacing increasingly large amounts of people. An estimated 10 million people within Africa have been forced to migrate over the last two decades due to desertification or environmental degradation. ^[15]

In 1995, half of Bhola Island in Bangladesh became permanently flooded, leaving 500,000 people homeless. The Bhola Islanders have been described as some of the world's first climate refugees^[16]. In 2007, a Bangladeshi scientist stated: "We're already seeing hundreds of thousands of climate refugees moving into slums in Dhaka."^[17] These refugees were fleeing flooded coastal areas.

The inhabitants of the Carteret Islands in Papua New Guinea are also among the first climate refugees due to sea level rise attributed to global warming and climate change^[18][19]. Other inhabitants of low lying islands and Island states, are also at risk. Tuvalu, Kiribati and the Maldives are especially susceptible to changes in sea level and storm surges^[20][21][22].

In Alaska, the village of Shishmaref, located on the 100 km long barrier island of Sarichef, also faces evacuation as rising temperatures cause the melting of sea ice and the thawing of the permafrost.^[23]

[edit] See also

• Displaced person
• Climate change
• Environmental refugee

Portal:Global Warming

[edit] External links

• No Place Like Home Environmental Justice Foundation campaign for climate refugees - includes films and reports
• Towards Recognition Awareness and resource blog regarding climate refugees
• Summary of resources. Summary page providing links to many key resources, websites and documents related to climate change, environmental change, disasters and forced migration. Forced Migration Online, 2008
• When home gets too hot: Human Displacement and Climate Change in International Law. Podcast recorded by Radio Netherlands Worldwide at the first of The Hague Debates on Thursday, 22 May 2008.
• Future floods of refugees. Report published by the Norwegian Refugee Council, 2008
• A Citizens Guide to Climate Refugees. Published by Friends of the Earth Australia, 2005
• Photos from ARGOS photojournalists
• http://www.each-for.eu/ regularly updated information about fieldwork on environmental change and forced migration scenarios
• Providing new homes for climate exiles
• http://www.liser.org/
• Climate Refugees Report Nov 2009 Highlighting the humanitarian plight of an estimated 150 million people whose homes will be lost as a result of climate change by 2050

[edit] References