Overlooked crisis

Raynold Louima’s life in Gonaives, Haiti, was upended by the devastating impact of hurricane Tomas in 2010. Already reeling from the aftermath of an earthquake earlier that year, which claimed over 100,000 lives, his farm was decimated by the hurricane. Despite toiling on his family’s farm and working on others’ land for three more years, a period when Haiti saw prolonged drought-like conditions, Louima, the eldest son, found it impossible to support his family of seven.

In 2013, the then 23-year-old took the decision to seek a better livelihood abroad for his family’s survival. Pooling together resources, including the sale of his grandmother’s cherished bull and contributions from neighbours, Louima embarked on a perilous journey to Brazil.

Over the next one month, he travelled to the Dominican Republic, Ecuador and camped at Peru, before reaching Brazil’s Acre city to stay at a centre accommodating thousands of migrants from Latin America and Africa, many of whom had left their homes for reasons similar to his.

“After facing the impacts of weather disasters in Haiti, I knew seeking residence in a foreign country was my only hope for a better future,” says Louima. Next, he secured a menial job and started learning air conditioner and refrigerator maintenance. In 2016, he married a Brazilian and in 2020—seven years after Louima left his home—he obtained Brazilian nationality. Today he works as a dental surgeon, runs his own cooling solutions company and a non-profit, Haiti Sorria, for children.

“In 2022, I managed to get one of my brothers, Woody, to Brazil. My other brother, Rogelson, has migrated to the Dominican Republic as the situation has only worsened in Haiti in the past years,” he says. According to a study by UNICEF in November 2023, floods and drought are becoming frequent in Haiti, resulting in deaths and forced displacement. It adds that tree felling, a leading contributor to climate change in Haiti, has become a means of survival for many families as the country is seeing the “gradual disappearance” of fruit crops and reduced farm yields.

Thais Alves Pinto, the lawyer who helped Woody get a visa, says that Louima and his family would not have had to go through the long struggle had there been a legal definition of climate refugees. Refugees, as defined under the Geneva Convention of 1951, are people with “well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion”. It adds that rights granted to a refugee are extended to the family. But the definition does not include climate change as a basis for seeking asylum.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees, in a paper in 2019, says the Geneva Convention could be applied to persons affected by climate change, as long as they are already marginalised and facing or are at risk of facing persecution. But this is easier said than done.

Ioene Teitiota from the island nation of Kiribati has been trying to get asylum in New Zealand since 2013 due to the adverse effects of climate change, particularly sea level rise. In 2015, Teitiota approached the UN Human Rights Committee, alleging that New Zealand, by refusing him asylum, had violated his right to life under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights adopted by the UN in 1966. He argued that rising sea levels in Kiribati had led to conflicts and reduced freshwater access, posing a threat to his life. In 2020, the UN committee upheld New Zealand’s decision, citing insufficient proof of a direct threat to Teitiota’s life.

The struggles of Louima and Teitiota highlight the complexities surrounding climate-induced displacement and the limitations of existing legal frameworks in addressing such challenges.

Mamadou Goita, executive director at the African think-tank Institute for Research and Promotion of Alternatives in Development, advocates for a consensus on the distinction between climate change and variability. “Mali has witnessed rapid desertification since the 1970s and this has forced many people to move to France. Still, many believe that the desertification is due to climate variability and can reverse in the future. So this distinction between climate variability and climate change is critical,” says Goita.

IN DENIAL

Without a legal definition, international efforts have focused on establishing climate change as a catalyst for human mobility, without explicitly addressing the question of climate refugees (see ‘Perfunctory actions’). The Global Compact for Migration, the first inter-governmental agreement reached in December 2018, acknowledges that climate change is a “deep cause” for the movement of people, but is silent on the impacted communities, says Goita. The Compact, agreed upon by all the 193 UN member states, is non-binding.

Similarly, the 2022 Kampala Declaration, adopted by 48 African countries in August 2023 to address the link between climate change and human mobility in the continent, does not mention the term climate refugee. “All these measures can offer some kind of protection to people, but do not provide a legal definition,” says Alice Baillat, policy advisor to the Geneva-based non-profit Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) and the Norwegian Refugee Council.

Beyond the regional treaties, the issue of climate refugees hardly features in global climate negotiations. The recently adopted text outlining the Global Goal on Adaptation, a significant outcome of the 28th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP28) in 2023, fails to mention climate migration, mobility or refugees. The global goal, enshrined under Article 7.1 of the 2015 Paris Agreement, pledges to “enhance [the world’s] adaptive capacity, strengthen resilience, and reduce vulnerability to climate change.”

The adopted text for the establishment of the Loss and Damage Fund, another key outcome of COP28, acknowledges climate-induced migration within a country, but has no explicit mention of climate refugees. “If the global negotiation texts do not address people displaced by climate hazards, they will always be incomplete. Many definitions within these documents, either adopted or in the process of adoption, remain vague,” says Goita.

Cristina Dragomir, a researcher at the New York University in the US, says the problem lies in the fact that international organisations feel that now is not the time to open up international conventions on climate refugees. “They say work must happen at the local level. But both must be done together,” says Dragomir. This is important as a single international convention alone will not be able to address all the different situations faced by climate change, says Balliat, adding that different tools and migration policies are needed to address the different needs of the affected people.

UNPREPARED STILL

A consensus on the legal definition of climate refugees is just the first step, as identifying the people will be the next big challenge. “Currently, no credible number is available on climate refugees. The world has a few estimates of internal displacement of people due to impacts of climate change, but even they do not capture the magnitude of the challenge,” says Goita. In 2021, the World Bank, in its Groundswell report, estimated that by 2050, some 216 million people worldwide would be internally displaced due to the impacts of climate change. IDMC estimates that in 2023 alone there were more than 32 million displacements because of natural disasters.

The other challenge is that countries currently provide refugee status on an individual basis, but climate change affects entire communities or even nations. “In the future, we may witness entire island nations succumbing to rising sea levels. The world is ill-prepared to handle the influx of so many refugees,” says Balliat.

Fearing such a situation, Tuvalu forged the world’s first climate migration pact with Australia in November 2023. Under the provisions, Australia pledges to grant residency to up to 280 Tuvaluans annually, extending sanctuary to those facing dangers due to climate change.

“Countries currently view refugees as a security and economic threat to their citizens. We know that climate-induced migration will only increase in the days to come. If approached with proper legal provisions and planning, climate migration can be an effective adaptation tool, carried out in a sustainable fashion to benefit both the affected countries and those providing refuge,” says William Clark from the Harvard University, US.

One such example is the Pacific Island Climate Mobility Framework. Forged in November 2023, it allows people to move legally between island countries in the Pacific region. It also encourages labour migration schemes among countries as an adaptation measure for people affected by climate change. The framework, though not legally binding, attempts to create migration pathways to enable Pacific people to move safely in the context of climate change.

This was first published in the 1-15 April, 2024 print edition of Down To Earth

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