Climate change is a refugee issue too

Member states of the United Nations, led by the U.S. and President Obama, should be commended for their commitment to addressing the growing refugee crisis around the world.

According to the UN Refugee Agency, more than 60 million people worldwide are currently displaced, with 54 percent of the world’s 21 million refugees coming from just three countries: Syria, Afghanistan and Somalia.

{mosads}To address this calamity, countries at the refugee summits hosted by the UN and Obama this week pledged to take in more refugees, increase humanitarian aid, and provide better employment and education opportunities for those who have been displaced.

The magnitude of this crisis is without question. Indeed, the current number of those displaced is the most is history, even surpassing the post-World War II era.

What’s more sobering is that while the non-binding pledges at the UN this week will – in the words of U.S. Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power – address “only a fraction” of the larger refugee crisis, the reality is that climate change is making the problem worse.

To its credit, the New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants that UN member states agreed to this week acknowledges that climate change is a factor forcing people from their homes. Yet, at the same time, those displaced by climate effects were rarely mentioned this week. What’s more, international law, primarily the 1951 Refugee Convention, doesn’t officially recognize climate refugees as “refugees” because they are not fleeing conflict or political or social persecution at home.

Experts estimate that by 2050, between 50 million and 200 million people could be displaced because of climate change. But while that seems far off, climate displacement isn’t something out of a science fiction movie. It’s happening today.

Take, for example, the remote Pacific nation of Kiribati, where the government has said the prospects of rising seas and strengthened weather events “threaten the very existence and livelihoods of large segments of the population.” In response, officials there have encouraged voluntary emigration and have even purchased land in nearby Fiji for eventual climate refugees to relocate. One Kiribati citizen famously applied for asylum in New Zealand because of poor climate related working conditions, but was later deported because he did not meet the legal definition of a refugee.

At the same time, climate displacement isn’t an abstract issue we can ignore because it affects others elsewhere far away from American shores; it too is happening right here at home. Many residents of the Gulf Coast are still displaced from the storms of 2005, the most active hurricane year on record. And in January of this year, for the first time ever, the federal government allocated funds to relocate residents of Isle de Jean Charles, an island community in south Louisiana that will most likely be underwater in the next few decades due to the effects of climate change, sea level rise and other human-induced erosion. 

“The changes are underway and they are very rapid. We will have climate refugees.”

Interior Secretary Sally Jewell recently warned.  

Now that the Obama administration is taking the lead on both issues, climate and refugees, it’s Congress’s turn to act. And when it does, Congress needs to take these facts into consideration when it debates the refugee issue and considers how it will allocate funding.

The reality is that the security of Americans and the safety of those around the globe are interconnected, particularly on the issues of climate change and refugees, because they know no borders.

But working to curb the flow of refugees and to resettle them where and whenever possible, is not just a security issue, it’s also a human rights one as well.

People retain the same basic rights and dignity regardless of who they are and whether they’re in their home countries or seeking economic or physical security elsewhere.

The more we think about how these challenges are linked – that yes, there are indeed climate refugees that will complicate the broader refugee issue – the more the United States can both advance its security and promote human rights domestically and abroad.

Colette Pichon Battle is the Executive Director the Gulf Coast Center for Law & Policy and the incoming Executive Director of the US Human Rights Network. Jeff Blum is Co-Director of the Global Progressive Hub.