As the climate crisis’ destructive impacts increase year by year, environmental migration has become a phenomenon “unprecedented in its scale and scope”. Reports show that in 2019, 24.9 million people suffered environmental displacement in 140 countries, and that we could see this number reach 200 million each year by 2050 unless drastic measures are taken regarding both climate action and disaster risk reduction.  

As communities forced to leave their homes are seen “living in overcrowded, makeshift shelters constructed from old clothes, plastic bags, cardboard and sticks”, the term ‘climate refugees’ has started to be used more often to describe them. But should this problem be seen as a refugee crisis? 

International law for refugees was established after the genocide committed to around 6 million Jews that came to be known as the Holocaust, as a way to avoid a similar tragedy happening again. In 1951, the United Nations Conference of Plenipotentiaries on the Status of Refugees and Stateless Persons held in Geneva defined ‘refugee’ as: 

“A person who, owing to a well-founded fear of persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinions, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country.” 

Environmental displacement does not fit into the above definition, as the direct pressures that cause people to leave their homes are not linked to armed conflict or political and cultural persecution. As such, when describing people displaced directly due to environmental reasons as ‘refugees’, it is meant instead to convey a notion of emergency. That is why the United Nations has been reluctant to denominate people who are displaced due climate change related reasons ‘climate refugees.’ Instead, the International Organization for Migration and the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees adopted the term ‘environmentally displaced people’ when referring to them. 

Thus, under international law environmental displacement does not fit into the possible reasons one could be provided legal protection through refugee status. Therefore, environmentally displaced people are vulnerable to “fall through the cracks in international humanitarian law.”

Africa and South Asia are home to most of the population that lives under the poverty line. It is not a coincidence that these are also the two areas in the planet with the most precarious situation on environmental displacement. Regions most prone to conflict tend to be those with poor state control or governance, which also tends to coincide with regions most vulnerable to climate change. 

2020 saw an increase of millions of displacements due to environmental events such as hurricanes, droughts and floods, with many of these unaccounted for each year. Last year, India and Bangladesh were recorded as the worst hit, with each accounting for at least over 2.5 million people displaced. Super-cyclone Amphan was the largest displacement event and named ‘Bay of Bengal’s worst storm in the century’. Among them, only around 818,000 were pre-emptive safety evacuations. Two weeks later, 170,000 additional displacements were caused due to Cyclone Nisarga.

Somalia is one of the African countries with the highest amount of environmental migration overall. Over 650,000 people were confirmed to have been displaced due to flooding caused by above-average intense precipitation during the rainy season last year, with about a quarter of them having already been displaced before and already living in displacement camps.

Resettling leads to a heavy burden on the local inhabitants, often undermining relationships with the host community and leading to more conflict in the new settlement. Eventually, as natural environment degradation, health risks, social insecurity and struggle over limited resources grow, one can observe another displacement cycle.   Due to heavy rains in 2020, Eastern Africa suffered a locust infestation that directly threatened food security and the livelihood of farmers and their communities, forcing people to move out of their homes in search of help.

Climate change’s impact on food security and water shortage are significant accelerators of rural migration to urban areas. Seeing their land become unproductive forces them to move to the cities. Estimates predict that Africa’s demography will be 50% urban by 2030, and 60% by 2050. This will mean that overpopulated cities in landlocked countries, exposed to higher temperatures and frequent heat waves, will face higher risks of water shortage, infrastructure degradation and other pressures on resources. 

But even the cities that are not landlocked are in a better situation: around half of African cities with populations that reach 1 million are located in coastal areas with low elevation, making them particularly vulnerable to climate events such as the rise of sea levels. This is further worsened by the lack of investment in urban planning, quality of housing and infrastructure and land management policies. 

The world is not ready for ‘climate refugees’. Actors from political, humanitarian, scientific, environmental and academic fields must work together. Particularly, there is a huge gap that must be filled by the higher levels of government: institutions should be created that specialize in tracking environmental migration and establishing international agreements that allow these communities to receive more adequate support and give them a voice they haven’t had so far.

Written by Fernando Tonon.

References :

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United Nations Environment Programme, A fight for our future: youth, climate justice and environmentally displaced people. (2019, January 7). UN Environment. 

https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/story/fight-our-future-youth-climate-justice-and-environmentally-displaced-people (accessed on 25 February 2021)

United Nations Habitat & United Nations Environment Programme (2010), The State of African Cities 2010: Governance, Inequalities and Urban Land Markets. Nairobi, UN-Habitat & UNEP.

United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. (1951, July 25). Final Act of the United Nations Conference of Plenipotentiaries on the Status of Refugees and Stateless Persons. UNHCR. https://www.unhcr.org/protection/travaux/40a8a7394/final-act-united-nations-conference-plenipotentiaries-status-refugees-stateless.html (accessed on 25 February 2021)

United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. (2020, August 7). Floods drive over 650,000 Somalis from their homes in 2020. UNHCR.  https://www.unhcr.org/news/briefing/2020/8/5f2cf86c4/floods-drive-650000-somalis-homes-2020.html (accessed on 25 February 2021)

United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. (2020, November 30). “Climate change is the defining crisis of our time and it particularly impacts the displaced.” UNHCR.  https://www.unhcr.org/news/latest/2020/11/5fbf73384/climate-change-defining-crisis-time-particularly-impacts-displaced.html (accessed on 25 February 2021)