Climate Migration

Globally, many view climate change as a mere environmental issue that nothing can be done about, forgetting the fact that climate change has wide implications, taking with it, under its umbrella, an evasive humanitarian facet, amongst many more such as political and economic . However, every change in any aspect of climate change ends up affecting humans directly . For example, in Africa, desertification due to climate change has caused a lack of resources resulting in the aggravation of farmer-herder violence . Over the last decade the issue of whether climate change as an agenda should be discussed in the UNSC or not has been widely debated, since it has dawned on people that it is also a security crisis , especially for the aggrieved shards of the global community . Climate stressors, such as changing rainfall, heavy flooding, and a rise in sea level rise, also put pressure on people to leave their homes and livelihoods behind. It makes their homes uninhabitable. An example of this could is the people living on the Pacific island states such as Kiribati and Tuvalu, who struggle dealing with sea-level rise.

From the violence caused by lack of resources, or economic monopoly over resources, and harsh living conditions caused by climate change such as persistent drought, floods, and desertification, which in turn leads to problems such as food insecurity and water scarcity, ensued a new challenge called 'climate migration'. Climate migration is a new challenge which has come into light recently. Risen from either violence due to climate change or environmental effects of climate change or both, this problem has further implications of its own. Climate Migration has already been presented as one of the main security risks of global warming.

In a world which is already dealing with so many refugee crises, climate migration just adds on. The main issue is, climate migration isn't really considered as a 'refugee crisis'. The 1951 convention on the status of refugees, signed by many countries across the world, defines a legitimate refugee as someone under “well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion”. This implies that climate change is not accepted as a reason to grant asylum and that climate migrants are not legally considered refugees according to international refugee law. This creates a whole new surge in the number of stateless people with nowhere to go. No one knows how many climate migrants will exist as there are no reliable estimates of the number of people forced out of their homes on account of climate change. This lack of track of numbers makes it difficult to spread awareness about how dire climate migration is as an issue.

Climate migration is an issue which needs to be dealt with because of the scale of displacement taking place. However, shunning them is no solution; we must give them asylum and allow them to assimilate with local cultures. The higher the wall is built, the higher harder will people try and to get over it. We need a holistic approach. People have been agitating for the revival of the 1951 convention on the status of refugees, as an urgent and growing issue. The document has various loopholes that must be fixed.

People are already moving because of climate stressors and changing weather patterns. Whether salinity intrusion in Bangladesh is making it difficult for farmers to continue cultivating rice or flooding in Kenya is killing livestock and destroying crops, people’s livelihoods are being threatened by climate stressors. In many cases, people will adapt to these stressors by migrating. Thus, Countries need to come out, share the burden, and grant asylum to the vulnerable. We need better border security and more burden sharing. Reiterating, we need a holistic approach. But, most importantly, in this case of climate migration, what we need is recognition. And recognition is what we will agitate for.