Preparing for “climate refugees” not enough: book

With the UN Secretary-General warning of “mass exodus”, and the World Bank estimating that more than 200 million people could be internally displaced by climate change by 2050, a new book on international law argues that they radically underestimate the problem—and muddle up the solutions.

The scope and complexity of climate change and migration vastly exceeds the numbers of people who could become “climate refugees,” warns Dr Lauren Nishimura of Melbourne Law School in her new open-access book, Climate Change, Human Rights, Adaptive Mobility, published by Oxford University Press.

“Climate change impacts are causing people to move in many different ways—with others also choosing or forced to remain in place—which refugee laws just do not account for,” she says. Part of the problem is that “most refugee protections don’t apply to people until afterpeople have left their country”.

But the biggest problem is that even well-meaning arguments for protecting climate refugees “put the burden on individual migrants, instead of seeing the problem for what it is: a collective one. Climate change is caused by wealthy countries, and it demands collective solutions and action.

“Relying on systems that require people to cross borders and prove that they face the prospect of dying, inhuman treatment, or serious rights abuses upon return is simply not enough.”

Her book reverses the approach:  rather than apply refugee laws to climate change, it argues, laws on climate change can address migration by clarifying the obligations of Australia and other states under the 2015 Paris Agreement and the 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.

“These agreements include obligations for countries to cooperate and adapt before, during and after the movement of people,” Dr Nishimura says. “They require countries to act now, to address the foreseeable risks climate change causes and the impacts that are already occurring.”

Such an approach “takes advantage of the clear scientific consensus and knowledge we have, to help prevent the kinds of dire predictions of mass migrations we often see in the headlines”.

These kinds of predictions often focus on national security risks alone, rather than people’s needs and rights. “In fact, restrictive policies that create onerous legal process, close borders or criminalise entry can lead to an increase in the very kind of displacement that triggers security concerns.”

Dr Nishimura says the focus should be on how international law can address climate change, and the resulting movement of people, in terms of human rights and needs, to ensure people have access to adequate food, water, and housing.

She says the priority should be the individuals and communities facing the brunt of climate change. “When entire geographic areas are at risk and whole communities might need to move, we have to find solutions that work not only for individuals but also their families and communities,” she says.

Her book argues that wealthy countries that have contributed most to climate change have legal duties to support others in adapting to its effects.

“We need to be able to provide safe, dignified solutions, which includes migration, for the millions of people facing significant harm from climate change.”