The Inevitable Crisis
Current climate policies are not enough to prevent an unprecedented global refugee crisis.
In January 2020, the small island nation of Kiribati in the central Pacific Ocean became the centre of attention of the international human rights community. Ioane Teitiota, a native of the island, lost his asylum case in front of the UN Human Rights Committee. He had sued the government of New Zealand for denying his asylum claim as a climate refugee.
He argued that climate change shrinks the country’s land area, increases environmental damage, and severely limits the availability of drinking water, which is why he had to flee the country for safety. While Mr. Teitiota lost the case since he and his family didn’t face an immediate threat to their lives, the UNHRC ruled that
“THE EFFECTS OF CLIMATE CHANGE IN RECEIVING STATES MAY EXPOSE INDIVIDUALS TO A VIOLATION OF THEIR RIGHTS.”
In other words, governments might be obliged to grant asylum to climate refugees in the very near future.
This very near future will hold unprecedented refugee numbers on a scale that almost no country has ever experienced before. The World Bank estimates about 140 million climate refugees by 2050, the UN and Greenpeace predict more than 200 million refugees. Acombination of water shortages, crop failures, and natural disasters has the potential to displace more people than all the wars of the 20th century combined.
The effect of the climate on war and displacement are already highly visible. The Syrian civil war was preceded by the worst five- year drought in the country’s history, which forced rural families to move to the large cities, where the combined tensions with refugees from the Iraq war gave rise to the Syrian civil war. The resulting flow of a million refugees brought the European Union to the verge of a populist upheaval and fuels tensions to this day. If the predictions are even remotely true, the EU faces at least a tenfold increase in refugees until 2050.
1% OF HISTORIC GLOBAL EMISSIONS COME FROM THE LEAST DEVELOPED COUNTRIES
Every single country in the world will have to fight climate-related adversity, but it is the least developed nations that will face the largest destruction and displacement. From indigenous people in the Arctic and flooded farmland in Bangladesh to famine catastrophes in Kenia and Jordan, climate change hits underdeveloped countries the hardest, and the resulting refugee streams will have to be handled by wealthy countries who have historically contributed the most to global emissions. Forced migration is one of the most visible forms of environmental injustice and environmental inequality.
69% OF CLIMATE-RELATED DEATHS COME FROM THE LEAST DEVELOPED COUNTRIES
The UNHCR ruling means that developed countries might have a legal obligation to help those people in the coming decades. In any case, large-scale displacement of entire people as a result of climate change and ecological disaster is imminent and mostly unpreventable.
Many climate refugees will set off for the European Union and Germany, which has the potential to spark a refugee crisis many times the size of the most recent one in 2015. Developed countries have a historical, moral, and potentially legal obligation to accommodate and help those that are forced to abandon their homeland and flee from environmental destruction. The migration crisis will come regardless. By recognizing this crisis early, countries will be better prepared to protect the human dignity of those most vulnerable and disadvantaged people of the coming century.
