By Kaitlyn Lyngaas
The Earth’s climate is changing at an alarming rate. Rising sea levels threaten to wipe out entire nations, while severe droughts devastate agricultural communities the world over.
People often fail to realize that the problems presented by climate change affect people directly. What happens to the people who live in these affected communities when their homes are no longer habitable? They are forced to pack up their families and leave behind everything they know.
According to a recent report published by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, by the year 2050 up to 150 million people could be displaced as a result of climate change. The problem lies in the fact that no laws protect these people’s rights. They do not fit the international legal definition of ‘refugee’, and are thus cast aside and left to their own devices.
The legal dispute over the rights of climate refugees stems from the fact that they cannot technically be classified as refugees.
Under the current order of international law, the term ‘refugee’ is reserved for those fleeing political persecution. Consequently, environmental migrants who are forced to flee cannot be granted asylum, so their treatment by their host government is not regulated.
Establishing laws to protect environmental migrants would require immense international cooperation on a global level. Unfortunately, proposals to open foreign nations to environmental immigrants have been met with hostility. If the definition of refugee is expanded to include environmental migrants, other countries would be legally obligated to help them.
Environmental migration also occurs internally, so a need exists for laws that support communities at the local level. Local governments need to be held accountable for their people. If people of the poorest and most marginalized communities receive greater support at the local level, they may not be forced to seek international solutions.
The international community is now faced with blatant violations of human rights and a strong moral obligation to act. People’s basic human rights are being infringed upon based on a legal technicality, which is unacceptable in today’s increasingly global society.
The way I see it, there are two possible courses of action. Either the legal policy needs to be altered to make a place for environmentally-displaced people, or an entirely new system of dealing with climatic migrants needs to be created.
Neither will be easy, but the time to sit back and allow this suffering to continue has passed.
