Over the past few years, flood, fire, and drought have forced more people to flee their homes than conflict or violence. Yet our existing refugee laws were written to protect people from harm inflicted by other humans, not by rising sea levels or drought. We lack the language and legal framework to protect these millions of people as refugees, which leaves them with limited options to turn to for safety.
When climate change forces people across borders, many find that their struggles don’t tick the right legal boxes. Often, they are turned back — with nothing to go back to. Those who don’t make it across an international border find themselves the “mere” internally displaced, with fewer avenues for support, food and housing.
Some of this is beginning to change. Countries and regions are signing agreements on how to address these increasing needs. Individual cases are establishing new precedents that gradually expand the options available for those who come after. And globally, the needle is moving, if slowly: during last year’s COP27 summit in Egypt, high-carbon-emitting countries agreed to compensate countries most impacted by climate change through a loss and damage fund, which will be established within the next three years. But it can be difficult to see the impact of these high-level changes on the lives of people displaced by climate change.
Amali Tower founded Climate Refugees with the goal of securing the same rights and recognition for people displaced by climate disaster as for other refugees. She has extensive experience working on the ground with displaced people and in the complex arena of international law and policy. We talked about how refugee policy is experienced on a human level, and how narrative can shape the global response to the climate crisis.
— Emma Hardy for Guernica
Guernica: What is a climate refugee?
Amali Tower: The problem is, the term “climate refugee” doesn’t actually exist. We’re talking about people who are moving as a result of climate change, but we don’t have a legal term for that. “Climate migrant,” or “environmental migrant,” are probably what people are most comfortable using. But “migrant” does not have a legal definition, unlike “refugee,” and implies voluntary movement.
Climate change leads to immobility in some cases, and forced migration in others. It’s also leading to displacement. I use the term “climate refugee” to bring to light that this is forced movement.
Guernica: Without a deep understanding of international law, it can be difficult to keep track of where change is taking place, and where it is meaningful. Can you update us on some of the recent advancements for climate refugees?
Tower: The advancement we’re seeing — or, for a more all-encompassing word, movement — is problematic in that it’s very ad hoc and it’s very patchwork. Some movement is happening in the human rights community. It’s happening in bilateral agreements between states. It’s even happening in regional agreements between entire continents or their subsections. This collaboration is extremely positive. But where state cooperations are happening, they’re tending to happen in places that are already on the front lines of the crisis.
In 2020, there was a pretty significant case in New Zealand in which the United Nations Human Rights Commission found that returning people facing life-threatening climate change conditions [to] their home country would be a human rights violation. That was an incredible landmark and an important finding, but these precedents are happening on a case-by-case basis. I don’t know what to call these things yet: they’re helpful, they’re steps in the right direction, but they’re slow. And this is unfortunately how the law works.
Guernica: And last week, the United Nations voted on an initiative from Vanuatu, asking for a permission of sorts for the International Court of Justice to give an advisory opinion on whether its people have a right to be protected from climate change.
Tower: The resolution paves the way for the world’s highest court to advise on climate change and human rights, specifically how existing international laws can be applied to strengthen states’ climate change actions. This means, for example, the court can weigh in on what states must do to ensure we meet the terms of previous climate agreements — and on the terms of states’ obligations and responsibilities to protect people and the planet.
The UN General Assembly resolution being adopted by consensus is historic: I believe it’s unprecedented. It signifies the importance and weight of the issue felt by not only the majority of UN members, but also the public. Now that resolution has been referred to the ICJ to answer those state obligations questions and weigh in with a legal opinion from the world’s highest court, which could very influential in terms of what obligations historic emitters – essentially Global North countries – have towards vulnerable Global South countries. ICJ opinions are non-binding, but they have the authority to look at existing international law – human rights, environmental, state agreements, and the like – and weigh in on what are states’ obligations to their own citizens and to each other.
Guernica: Why are wealthier countries not providing the same support as affected countries? What factors do you think they’re refusing to recognize or respond to?
Tower: I don’t think it’s a failure to recognize the problem so much as a failure to recognize the nuanced ways that climate change intersects with forces that drive migration. Sure, climate change itself can be a driver, but oftentimes the ways that climate change influences migration are less direct. Take what the climate community calls “sudden onset events” that result from the negative effects of climate change. These could be a disaster, like a cyclone or storm, for example. But there are other adverse impacts of climate change too, which are slow-onset events. We’re talking about rising sea levels, drought, and dwindling crops. These events also contribute to loss of livelihood, to food insecurity, and ultimately to migration.
A good example of this is the Central American Dry Corridor, which has experienced six to eight years of drought. Now, this is a region where there is a highly rural population of Indigenous groups who are already marginalized. They’ve experienced gross human rights abuses, and many communities there coexist with multinational corporations that are highly extractive. Yet when governments hear someone say, “Well, I’m a farmer. I’ve come from the Central America Dry Corridor, I’m an Indigenous person,” that’s often misunderstood as, “I’m an economic migrant.” But it’s more complex than that. Economic insecurity doesn’t stem from nothing.
Guernica: International law recognizes a refugee as someone fleeing persecution due to race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or membership within a particular social group. Do you think this definition needs to be expanded?
Tower: It’s not that the definition needs to be expanded. It’s recognizing that the definitions as they currently exist in international law can apply to climate refugees already.
Let me give you an example. When I was in Tijuana, I met a woman who had just been turned back from the US border. She was originally from Guatemala. Her family were farmers in the Dry Corridor, which as I mentioned has suffered from extreme drought. Then, when Hurricane Eta devastated the region in 2020, she lost her entire family. She was left with just her grandfather. Two weeks later, a second hurricane hit, and her grandfather was killed. So she was completely alone. She was living as a young, single woman without the protection of her family, a community, or, most importantly, a man, in a very volatile region. She came under threat from gangs in what was essentially gender-based violence. That’s what led her to actually leave Guatemala and come to the United States, at which point she wasn’t even able to get in.
Asylum judges need to understand the nuanced ways that climate events can lead to persecution. When they hear of someone fleeing disaster, they also need to understand the compounding impacts of that disaster. And those impacts often fall under the existing refugee convention. So when I mention this woman from Guatemala, there are likely protections she could turn to already. She should be able to seek protection in the United States on the basis of being a woman who was vulnerable in those circumstances or her status as an Indigenous person. But nations need to understand the nuance first.
Guernica: Isn’t refusing to understand that nuance a question of political will?
Tower: What we’re seeing, really, is a lack of empathy. I think this lack of empathy underpins our lack of understanding, and our lack of imaginative and cooperative responses.
The way we talk about migration tends to be in very dehumanizing language. We also have different policies for different parts of the world, which tend to divide into the Global North and Global South. These policies tend to be quite racist. You only need to look at the immediate response to Ukraine as the most visceral and recent example of how the European Union — which failed to craft a coordinated migration policy when Syrians, Afghans, and Eritreans were risking their lives to get to Europe — was able to find one very quickly when the migration was coming from war-torn Ukraine. Meanwhile, certain countries were perfectly fine with opening one border to Ukraine and closing another to Afghans, to Iraqis.
How do you justify having a policy whose application depends on where people are coming from? There’s no caveat in the convention for which country a person comes from. That’s not what human rights are.
Guernica: The majority of people who are displaced due to climate are displaced within their home countries. How does internal displacement factor into your thinking?
Tower: Crisis isn’t triggered the minute somebody crosses a border; it’s triggered because it’s happening to them right now. It’s not a matter of whether displacement occurs within or across a border. It’s displacement, and that should trigger a response.
Let me tell you about the people from the Lake Chad Basin, where the lake is shrinking. The people I spoke with there had to move multiple times — even several times a year — to keep pace with the lake, which is their only source of water. There are only one or two schools in the area. As they moved closer to the lake, those schools were too far away to access. So people were forced to choose between giving their children an education or having access to water. That’s how slow-onset climate change works.
Guernica: And this is also a part of the world where there’s active conflict, too?
Tower: Yes. Lake Chad shrinking had a direct impact on the ability of Boko Haram, an insurgent group from northern Nigeria that’s destabilizing the region, to reach and attack lake residents. The shrinking lake exposed land, creating spontaneous roads that allowed direct access to villages and opportunities for the armed group to attack, raid, kill, forcibly displace, and seize property and land as their base of operation.
What’s interesting is that most of the people I met who had crossed a border spoke of being displaced by conflict and the lake shrinking. Once they had crossed an international border, they had already moved several times. They’d been dealing with food shortages and displacement for thirty years. They didn’t see their displacement as an issue of crossing an international boundary. It was a problem that existed long before conflict forced them to do that.
Guernica: When we look at it from their perspective, it doesn’t make sense that crossing a border triggers a humanitarian response when decades of forced movement didn’t. Once they cross the border into, say, Nigeria, to escape conflict, there’s infrastructure in place to help — refugee camps, food rations, healthcare for kids; all support that’s paid for primarily by the Global North, which is to say, polluting countries. But what you’re saying — and what these people are saying — is, what’s the difference?
Tower: Unless there’s been an identified humanitarian disaster or conflict, these are people who fall between the cracks. When people are internally displaced, especially in countries on the front lines of the climate crisis, they are moving within countries whose governments have fewer and fewer resources with which to respond. I mean, if everything’s on fire, what am I gonna put it out with? So internal displacement requires international support, cooperation and funding.
Guernica: Last year, COP27 in Egypt ended with an agreement to create a loss and damage fund. Can you give us some context for this fund? Where has it come from? What is it intended to do?
Tower: Vanuatu put forth the expression of loss and damage over thirty years ago, but it didn’t go very far beyond a conversation piece. Eight years ago, at the climate summit in Paris, countries in the Global North accepted that they needed to help developing countries adapt to the negative effects of climate change, and they also had to take steps to ensure their actions didn’t contribute to irreversible losses for vulnerable countries. Basically, in theory, they accepted that even with money to adapt, there would still be climate effects that are irreversible: loss and damages.
For a long time, the US and other polluting countries obstructed the loss and damage agreement, arguing that it could open the door for almost limitless liability. But pressure from developing countries ended the stalemate. Now it’s just a question of mechanisms: How to administer the fund? Who gets what, when and under what circumstances? Which countries should be considered developing? I mean, you can imagine that this is going to be incredibly difficult. It’s unprecedented.
Guernica: Do you think this is just another way for wealthy nations to avoid responsibility and throw money at the problem without enacting any real change?
Tower: That’s certainly the fear. Promises are made year after year, but they’re also always broken. We’re gonna help. We gotta tackle this together. Those words start to wear very thin. What I hear from people in the Global South, whether they’re elected leaders or Indigenous farmers, is “I don’t trust that someone has my back.” And I think that that’s really heartbreaking.
Still, it’s not useful for me to be cynical. I’d rather fight to make sure that what’s created is representative of people’s needs, and accessible to the people who need it. This fund is very much an instrument of justice in my mind. Money is not going to solve all of this — you’re not gonna ever make it right — but, well, this is how you compensate.
People are trapped in vulnerable situations because of a lack of options; this fund would be one more positive tool in an arsenal that doesn’t yet exist. So thinking back to that woman who lost her family in Guatemala, if the government had access immediately to funds after that disaster, that would have created one more option for her to turn to before she ended up at the US border.