Environmental Refugees

They have always been with us, but who comes to the rescue?

Photo by Constant Loubier on Unsplash

The “environmental refugee” could be an individual who has been physically displaced from their home, due to flooding, loss of water, or contamination of water or land. Examples of environmental refugees include anyone from a community in Arizona and Texas where water is no longer available or so contaminated it is unuseable.¹

The most typical “environmental refugee” is referred to as a “climate refugee” and is typically an individual or community displaced due to flooding. Some refer to this category as a “coastal refugee”, because there are many reasons for flooding, not all “climate”. (The term, “climate change” has been so overused that it has lost all meaning and has become polarizing.)

What has been missed in climate change discussions is that climate change will be regional, and far from uniform. Some places will see increases in water, some decreases. Some areas will become warmer, some potentially cooler. This is another reason that climate engineering is far too dangerous to allow experimentation, which I discussed in “unintended consequences” here.²

Climate refugees

Several years ago, I spend my development leave doing research in Geneva, Switzerland at the United Nations, World Health Organization. As part of my time, I wanted to understand more about The United Nations High Commissioner on Refugees and how they might handle the predicted “flood” of climate refugees. The UN High Commissioner on Refugees office was created in 1950 with by the United Nations and its organizing and authorizing treaty is United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees of 1951. It is one of the UN units that reports directly to the General Assembly.

In one of my visits to the Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees, I asked how they were going to address climate refugees. They expressed concern that they were already overwhelmed with refugees from worn-torn countries, and adding a new category of refugee that did not fit any of their definitions was beyond the scope of their legal authority. Simply put, they did not recognize the term “climate refugee” as a refugee, based on their definition:

Art. 1(a) [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.³

One of the most significant rights of refugees is that

No contracting State shall return (“refouler”) a refugee in any manner whatsoever to the frontiers of territories where his life or freedom would be threatened on account of his race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion.⁴

Many environmental refugees, unlike refugees from war-torn countries will not have to cross borders of their country, and may instead go to higher ground in the same country. The UNHCR has a category for those so situated: IDP-Internally displaced person. IDPs are defined as

[p]eople who have been forced or obliged to flee or to leave their homes or places of habitual residence in particular as a result of generalized violence, violations of human rights or natural or man-made disasters, and who have not crossed an internationally recognized state border.⁵

But this definition does not come from a treaty, but it does suggest natural or man-made disasters might cover the environmental IDP or Climate IDP. It comes from a compilation of humanitarian law called The Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement, created in 1998. These are restatements of the law that is relevant to the internal displacement of people. This document is created to attempt to clarify gray areas and gaps in international law between the various treaties covering refugees and international human rights and humanitarian law.⁶

There are about 50 million IDPs compared to only about 25 million Refugees, so there is a real need to address the law around this displaced status.

In order to be designated as an IDP, the criteria include (1) making a specific request from Sec-General UN; (2) the host state providing consent; (3) the host is expected to guarantee access and security; (4) the UNHCR should have the necessary expertise and funds; and (5) the IDP project must have a clear relationship to UNHCR’s mission.

But even given this reading of international law to include climate refugees or IDPs, the expected large number of climate refugees call for more official action on the part of the international community.

Proposals, Protocols and Procrastination

My visit to the UNHCR was in 2007, but it was not until November 2009, that the Climate delegations proposed language in the draft Protocol to the UNFCCC UN Framework Convention on Climate Change:

. . .[a]ctivities related to national, regional and international migration and displacement or planned relocation of persons affected by climate change while acknowledging the need to identify modalities of interstate cooperation to respond to the needs of affected populations who either cross an international frontier as a result of, or find themselves abroad and are unable to return owing to, the effects of climate change.

However, this language was omitted later in the December draft.

In June 2010, in Bonn for the conference of the parties to the UNFCCC, they tried again to add this language and succeeded with a much weaker version. Later, in Cancun, for the Adaptation meeting of the UNFCCC, language was added that would open the door to funding climate refugees

14(f) ‘invites’ states to ‘enhance action on adaptation . . . Taking into account their common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities and specific national and regional development priorities, objectives and circumstances’ by undertaking ‘measures to enhance understanding coordination and cooperation with regard to climate change induced displacement, migration and planned relocation, where appropriate at national, regional and international levels.

In part, the “common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities” means that richer countries will help poorer countries in their efforts to resettle communities displaced by “climate change induced displacement.”

This action was taken in response to the inevitable increase in displacements. Among the first climate refugees in the world in modern history, are the Carteret Islanders.

The Climate Refugees of the Carteret Islands

The Carteret Islands are part of the country of Papua New Guinea in the South Pacific. (You have to be flying for about 22 hours to get there from the U.S..) Their island was disappearing due to rising sea level. In November 2005, the Papua New Guinea (PNG) government authorized the evacuation of the islands, to the nearest island, Bougainville, which is about 80 miles away. But promised funding disappeared and not one bit was used for the Carteret evacuation and resettlement.⁷

The citizens took it upon themselves to relocate and the churchs from other countries mainly the U.S., Australia, New Zealand and Germany. The catholic church in Bougainville has made land available for sale for the relocation of the families.

The U.N. has not taken further action. Recall from the language of the protocol to the UNFCCC, they simply urge states to plan and support relocation due to “climate change induced displacements”. Thus, it is the responsibility of Papua New Guinea to fund this resettlement, but with their refusal to take any action to support the relocation does not trigger any penalties. Only diplomatic pressure or social media pressure might make a difference, or going to the wealthier countries to supply the needed funding.

In 2010, an Oscar-nominated documentary about the plight of the Carteret Islanders got the attention of the world.⁸ Yet 22 years later, there are still 350 families yet to move from the sinking islands.

Who will come to the rescue?

The international politics around climate change have made it difficult to reach agreements not only because of the “common but differentiated responsibilities” (rich vs. poor countries) but the division often comes from the risk of sea level rise. The United States typically has allies in international meetings with the United Kingdom and Japan, yet because both of these close allies are island nations, they often diverge sharply from positions taken by the United States in climate change negotiations. You can also expect those wealthy countries to be saving their funding for their own island needs for a climate change future.

Paying for relocation, displacement and resettlement by 2050 when substantial accretion of coastal regions around the world will result in land disappearing, has not even been realistically estimated.

If adaptation is our best strategy then plan your long term land investments looking at this map.⁹

The unintended consequences of international promises to fund relocation of environmental refugees is the delay in planning for more economical strategies that might be more realistic. Incentives to move now before flooding, such as relocation bonuses for leaving certain high risk areas should be considered by states faced with the obligation to plan ahead for its citizens.

As in the first climate refugees, it may be the private sector, philanthropy and religious organizations that in the end save the families of the flooded communities.

1. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/nov/23/texas-town-without-running-water-sandbranch

2.

3. https://www.unhcr.org/media/convention-and-protocol-relating-status-refugees

4. Art. 33(1), 1951 Convention at https://www.unhcr.org/media/convention-and-protocol-relating-status-refugees

5. https://www.ohchr.org/en/special-procedures/sr-internally-displaced-persons/about-internally-displaced-persons#:~:text=According%20to%20the%20Guiding%20Principles,avoid%20the%20effects%20of%20armed

6. https://www.ohchr.org/en/special-procedures/sr-internally-displaced-persons/about-internally-displaced-persons#:~:text=According%20to%20the%20Guiding%20Principles,avoid%20the%20effects%20of%20armed

7. https://www.oxfamamerica.org/explore/stories/papua-new-guinea-the-islands-are-shrinking/

8. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Come_Up_(film)

9. https://coast.noaa.gov/slr/#/layer/slr or https://coast.noaa.gov/slr/