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Wildfires. Floods. Hurricanes. The consequences of climate change caused by carbon-fuelled emissions have been causing havoc for years. People are forced to move.. These are not the only climate catastrophes that occur suddenly.
The slower-moving disasters—sea levels that creep farther inland, temperatures that diminish crop yields, storms that dump more and more rain, and rainstorms that fail to appear at all—are even more likely to cause people to leave home and never come back.
These are the insidious Climate impactsThey have already begun. Alaskan Indigenous Communities have been Observe their villagesPermafrost melting at an alarming rate causes permafrost to melt and wash away for decades. Tribal residents along the Louisiana coast lose a football field’s worth of land to the Gulf of Mexico every 90 minutes, due to rising sea levels and land subsidence, both of which are precipitated by the fossil fuel industry. In Bangladesh, rural residents are fleeing to the low-lying nation’s cities to escape frequent flooding and loss of farmland. Kiribati is one of the Pacific Ocean countries. We must call for actionAs their islands slowly sink beneath the waves. The list goes on.
What is Climate Migration?
In 2016, President Obama observed the relationship between climate changes, migration, and sociopolitical instability. “Climate Change and National Security” memorandum. The memo described the many impacts of climate change—from rising sea levels to food shortages to extended drought—that could “lead to population migration within and across international borders, spur crises, and amplify or accelerate conflict in countries or regions already facing instability and fragility.”
Two years later the World Bank predicted that climate change will cause widespread displacement. More than 140 million peopleWithin their countries of origin in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia by 2050.
“Climate displacement is movement, in part due to climate-related disasters, both sudden and slow-onset disasters, that are either temporary or permanent, within countries or across borders,” explains Ama FrancisClimate displacement project strategist at International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP). Through their work at this New York City–based organization that fights for the legal rights of refugees, Francis is focused on addressing the Inequalities in structural structure—social, economic, or political—that shape a person’s decision or ability to move elsewhere. Those with fewer financial resources or those who are caretakers for others, for example, can’t as easily pick up and start somewhere new.
Climate change refugees
The climate crisis has a significant impact on Black and Indigenous peoples around the world. Particularly women. According to the United Nations, women account for 80 percent of climate refugees. Women, who are often caretakers of climate refugees, are more likely to experience poverty than men, which can hinder their recovery from climate disasters. Gender-based violence against girls and women increases in areas affected by climate change.
Of course, the disproportionate impacts of climate change don’t end at the community level. WealthyCountriesThe climate crisis that has now made low-income countries less livable has been caused by global warming. According to A reportAccording to Oxfam and Stockholm Environment Institute, the top 1 percent of global income earners, which is approximately 63 million people, emitted twice as much carbon dioxide between 1990 and 2015. This compares with those who have incomes in the bottom 50%, which is equivalent to 3.1 billion people.
In 2017, Hurricanes Eta (and Iota) displaced thousands in Nicaragua and Honduras. Top: After floods in Honduras, a family takes refuge under a highway. Bottom: Families in Haulover, Nicaragua are divided on whether to rebuild or relocate inland.
Juan Carlos/Hans Lucas/Redux. Cesar Nunez/The New York Times/Redux
Needed: A global solution
After years of failing acknowledge the connections between them, Climate change and migration2015 saw world leaders finally connect the dots and decide to create an integrated approach to solving both issues. They created the Task Force on Displacement at the 21st Conference of the Parties in Paris, which paved the path for the creation three-years later of the Global Compact on Safe, Regular, and Regular Migration, and the Global Compact on Refugees. These groups have had important conversations, but have yet to take the next steps.
Lack of funding for climate mitigation and adaptation is a big problem that hinders progress, says Francis, a Dominican native. In 2017, Hurricanes Maria and Irma decimated Dominica. “What’s really central for climate displacement right now is making sure that there are enough resources flowing toward adaptation, so that people not only have the option to move but also have an option to stay at home if that’s what they want.”
This is exactly the problem Salote SoqoDirector of advocacy for global displacement at Unitarian Universalist Service Committee (UUSC),, is working to fix. Soqo and UUSC are committed to helping those who are relocating in the Pacific, or will soon be, by financially supporting frontline community groups that have been left out of mainstream funding sources. As an Indigenous woman of Fiji, where more than 40 communities are currently identified for relocation, Soqo laments the fact that global climate efforts haven’t focused on plans and preparations for such moves.
A video from Fiji’s National Disaster Management Office (NDMO) featuring residents of the village of Tukuraki three years after their relocation due to landslides.
Globally, the number of people being forced to flee their homes is increasing. According to A report by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, 98 percent of disasters were related to “weather and climate” and internally displaced 30.7 million people in 2020. The worst hit region in the United States was Central America. Two Category 4 hurricanes, Eta & Iota, struck that year. They displaced at least 500,000 people. 1.5 million peopleGuatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua
Soqo says, “We need to get more serious about human mobility in those spaces.”
The most affected countries by climate change
As the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Sixth Assessment reportIt is clear that the climate crisis affects everyone on the planet. However, not everyone is affected equally. For example, South Asia, sub-Saharan Africa and parts of Central and South America will feel the most severe effects of deadly heat stress. But Europe and North America will not be spared.
And the IPCC authors write that flooding events due to rising sea levels could lead to “very high losses in East Asian cities.” They also predict that by midcentury, more people living in low-lying coastal settlements and cities globally will be at risk from coastal-specific climate risks.
John Taylor transports his belongings after moving into the Reliant Arena Houston in the aftermath Hurricane Katrina 2005.
AP Photo/David J. Phillip
United States, get up!
Given the scale of these threats, the Biden administration’s publication of 2021 ReportThe report on the impact of climate change on migration, which was published prior to the COP26 meeting at Glasgow, Scotland, came out not too soon. Francis states that the report was important for many other reasons, as well as being the first U.S. government one of its kind.
First, it recognizes that climate displacement is an issue happening right now—not in some abstract future world. Second, the report shows the United States’ desire to find new legal routes for climate-displaced people. This includes Temporary Protection Status and expanding the eligible origin country list. It also led to the creation of a task force.
“This report really says to climate-displaced people, ‘we see you, you matter, there are things that the U.S. government can do to protect you,’” Francis says.
Although the task force’s creation was a positive step, the administration could do more. There are millions of people caught in the climate crosshairs. They have no time for waiting and must act immediately.
The report does not address displacement concerns within the U.S. border. The country saw the worst and most widespread dislocations since at least the mid-1800s. In fact, more than 1,000,000 people fled the Gulf Coast area in the two weeks that followed Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The recovery and return process was also remarkable. far more lengthyIt is more important for Black New Orleansians than for white residents.
Indigenous groups all across the country have increasingly grappled with similar injustices—facing more extreme heat and less precipitation on their lands, generally, as a Recent study found—and they’ve been left to navigate relocation processes without much guidance or financial support. Robin BronenThe inaction of the Alaska Institute for Justice, which has been advocating for displaced Alaska Natives for decades is frustrating. “I think this is preventable, and we are not preventing this crisis,” she says. “We have zero capacity right now in the United States to deal with it.”
Finally, the report, which was led by the National Security Council, should have been more clear that climate change is the national security threat here—not the migrants themselves.
“There’s a way in which climate displacement has been used to fuel fear of immigration and immigrants,” Francis explains. “The issue has definitely been co-opted by xenophobic actors who push this narrative that there are millions of climate-displaced people who are going to arrive in the United States, and therefore the U.S. needs to harden its borders.” Meanwhile, some elected U.S. officials have been finding Innovative waysto stop the resettlement and protection of asylum seekers and refugees. IRAP has other ideas.
The Yup’ik village Quinhagak, Alaska is under threat from erosion and disappearance of sea ice. Local leaders are considering moving the community to safer ground.
A path forward
August 2021: IRAP It has released its own reportThis document outlines the policies that the United States could adopt in order to combat climate migration. The group calls on the U.S. Department of Justice, among other things, to issue clear guidelines acknowledging that environmental harm often occursCombines with other drivers for displacementThis would make someone eligible for refugee status. Francis suggests that the next step would be to train judges and immigration officers to recognize that some people who have been displaced by climate change may be eligible for refugee status under U.S. law. “And that’s something that the government can do without needing any new legal authority or any authorization from Congress.”
The report was endorsed by NRDC, and other organizations. It follows a UUSCpOlicy briefThey made recommendations like granting funds directly for frontline communities and changing how the Federal Emergency Management Agency distributes disaster aid. In her own wordsBronen suggests that a national governance framework be established for climate relocation. This would include community-based organizations and tribal governments in decision-making processes. The team approach to solving such a complex, urgent problem will be most effective.
“What’s desperately needed is for all of us to pay attention to the places where we live and how they’re changing, so that we can help inform the responses of how we’re going to adapt,” she says.
“We tend to think this is going to happen to somebody else, and not us, because either we have enough money or we live in a place we think is going to be safe. And based on my experience of living in Alaska, I don’t think anywhere is safe.”
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