The Need for Focus on Climate Refugees
By: Raidah Morshed
Tags: Climate Refugee, Politics, Bangladesh, Climate Change, Refugee

In 1990, the IPCC predicted that “the gravest effects of climate change may be those on human migration as millions are displaced by shoreline erosion, coastal flooding and severe drought”. Since then, research and debate surrounding the relationship between environmental degradation and forced migration has led to terms such as climate refugees, environmental migrants, and eco-refugees. As a delta country, this would leave Bangladesh in particular to face the brunt of climate change, in addition to the weather hazards that it already regularly faces. A World Bank report from March 2018 predicts that by 2050, impacts of climate change could result in 13.3 million Bangladeshis to face environmental migration. The rural and impoverished population of Bangladesh has been largely affected by environmental migration, and this is evidence of the global imbalance of the impact of climate change. Yet, gaps in legal recognition and human rights of environmental migrants is depriving this group of the necessary aid and attention they deserve.

Photo: GMB Akash

The IOM defines environmental migrants as “persons or groups of persons who, for compelling reasons of sudden or progressive changes in the environment that adversely affect their lives or living conditions, are obliged to leave their habitual homes”. Due to its biophysical factors, Bangladesh is particularly prone to the effects of climate change. IPCC reports (2014) estimated that “a one-metre sea level rise in the south of the country will entail a 17–20% loss of territory to the sea”, putting a large population of the country at risk of environmental migration. While the exact number of climate migrants in Bangladesh is unknown, the Environmental Justice Foundation predicts that it could be up to 250,000 a year. As temperatures get warmer, the World Health Organization also anticipates a spike in mortality rates due to higher prevalence of malaria, dengue fever, and diarrhea — epidemics which Bangladesh has already been battling recently.

It is interesting to note how the dynamics of global economic inequality and differentials in power in international politics has left less developed countries (LDCs) — such as Bangladesh — to deal with the worst effects of climate change, while the main proponents of climate change — more industrialised and developed nations (MDCs) — reserve the privilege of denying the effects and even the existence of it. Nawrotzki (2014) says that the wealth and prosperity of the U.S. and other MDCs has been through the means of increased consumption of natural resources. This prosperity, Nawrotzki points out, has come at the cost of destruction of livelihoods and land of LDCs, especially the poor rural populations. Reports from the Union of Concerned Scientists, have found that 35% of the world’s total CO2 emissions was by the US and China alone. Yet, US President Donald Trump has gone on continuously denying the existence of climate change and the USA has since pulled out of the Paris Agreement as well. Such obnoxious denial of and lack of accountability for this very real phenomenon by the nations primarily responsible for it — while some of the poorest people in rural Bangladesh are left to navigate the repercussions — is a clear depiction of the Marxist ideas of capitalism and the status quo, applied on a global scale.

Because environmental refugees are not legally recognized, they are deprived of legal protections guaranteed by the UN’s 1951 Refugee Convention. This relieves governments and international communities from the moral and legal obligations to climate refugees that legally defined refugees receive. While the UNHRC explicitly and officially recognizes that global warming has infringed upon human rights, these concepts are seldom applied in a country like Bangladesh. Firstly, the rights of this particular group is not legally recognized by the law commission, the human rights commission, or the Supreme Court in Bangladesh. Also, since many groups in Bangladesh have had to deal with serious infringements of their human rights, the same happening to specific groups, such as climate refugees, fails to receive adequate political and media attention. Statistics about climate migrants are not available in detail and difficult to measure, particularly since a lot of rural-to-urban migration takes place for non-climate reasons as well. This also contributes to the negligence of climate migrants.

To ensure policies for environmental migrants, first, we need to first define them in more detail. With better distinction and categorization and by investing in empirically grounded research on climate related migration, we can customize policies better to the local context. Furthermore, as the bulk of climate refugees end up in lower-income, informal settlements, the Bangladesh government must ensure that environmental migration is being considered in urban planning. It is also morally and politically crucial that developed nations as well as the UN take appropriate responsibility for the consequences of climate change, legally recognize climate refugees, and come up with binding resolutions for their aid. All of these must be undertaken with utmost urgency.

With the emergence of First World activists such as Greta Thunberg increasingly directing global media’s focus to climate change, the issue is getting more — although not enough — attention from the international community. However, these perspectives are still dominated by the global — and sometimes, West-centric — effects of climate change. There continues to be negligence of the imbalance of impact of climate change between developing and developed countries. Paying attention to and taking appropriate responses to the narratives of the rural and impoverished Bangladeshi climate refugees is critical in contextualising and framing our policies regarding climate change and global warming.