UNITED NATIONS, MEDIAGLOBAL News – The Third International Conference on Small Island Developing States (SIDS), which will kick off in just a few days, will not address the issue of creating a new category of “environmental refugees.”
In 2011, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon discussed the impact of climate change on international peace and security.
“Environmental refugees are reshaping the human geography of the planet, a trend that will only increase as deserts advance, forests are felled, and sea-levels rise”, he said to the Security Council.
“Mega crises may well become the new normal. These are all threats to human security, as well as to international peace and security.”
The Secretary-General used the term “environmental refugee,” yet this term is not covered by the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees. As a legal term, “refugee” is currently defined as protecting persons who fled their home country in fear of persecution for reasons of race, religion, political opinion, or ethnicity.
In 2006, representatives of environmental and humanitarian organizations, UN agencies, and governments came together to discuss the issue of climate induced mobility. Delegates at this meeting which took place in the Maldives, proposed an amendment to the 1951 Convention that would extend the mandate of the UN refugee regime to include environmental refugees.
This proposal has been on the table for eight years and the latest updates revealed that it won’t be addressed at the upcoming SIDS Conference in Samoa. Professor of Law at the University of Stellenbosch, Dr. Oliver Ruppel who is the coordinating lead author on the Africa chapter of the 5thAssessment Report of the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is not surprised.
“This issue is unfortunately a complicated one. It is also politically contentious with a large price tag,” he toldMediaGlobal News. “Financial barriers are major challenges just as legal barriers pertaining for example to the question of admission or continued stay of migrants and displaced persons with an environmental component in their decision to migrate to a foreign territory, i.e. the applicability of international refugee law.”
Within the context of the IPCC, which was established by the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) and theWorld Meterological Organization (WMO), Ruppel has published widely on the impact of climate change and environmental migration.
Ruppel emphasized that, in terms of legal instruments, the issue of climate induced human mobility is only fragmentarily regulated.
“There is no single international agreement nor climate change or refugee laws to adequately provide for a consolidated legal framework,” Ruppel explained to MediaGlobal News.
Questions around the protection and resettlement of environmental refugees are pertinent, especially, for the populations of those Small Island States located only few meters above sea level, as well as inhabitants of nations losing substantial amounts of their territory to either floods — like Bangladesh and India — or to drought — like Morocco and Tunisia among many other African countries. Many environmental and Human Right’s activists, researchers and scientists share the view that, since the nature of climate change is global, and humans all over the world contribute to it, the international community should accept responsibility for climate change related cross-border movement.
Even though the proposal to include environmental refugees as a category is being bypassed by the International Conference on SIDS, there are some hopeful developments according to Ruppel.
“Paragraph 14 (f) of the UNFCCC Cancun Adaptation Framework has the potential to place human mobility more effectively within the realm of adaptation to climate change and foster the thought that adaptation may require longer-term societal transformations”, Ruppel told MediaGlobal News.
“The key will be to align the appetite and needs of the governments with a range of appropriate – and politically feasible measures for the Post 2015 Climate Protection Agenda.”