Climate Change | Legal limbo awaits millions of future ‘climate refugees’

35-year-old Nurun Nahar, right, who lost her husband along with her belongings to the River Meghna stands for a photograph in the island district of Bhola, Bangladesh

Farmer Ajmad Miyah has given up on ever settling down again. Three years after the sea swallowed his home on the Bangladeshi coast, he still has no property or possessions, and survives by tilling other people’s fields in exchange for food.
“I’ve accepted that this is reality,” the lean, 36-year-old Miyah said in the island district of Bhola, where the Meghna River spills into the Bay of Bengal. “My house will always be temporary now, like me on this Earth.”
At least 19.3 million people worldwide were driven from their homes by natural disasters last year — 90 percent of which were related to weather events, according to the Geneva-based Internal Displacement Monitoring Center.
Most have stayed within their own countries, including millions displaced in the South Asian delta nation of Bangladesh. But as their numbers rise, more will feel compelled to cross international borders in search of safe haven. They could end up in a state of a legal limbo with no rights or guaranteed help.
A study in November suggested 470 million to 760 million people worldwide could lose their land to rising seas in this century if global warming is allowed to continue unchecked. The study, by the nonprofit research and news organization Climate Central, looked at global population data and sea rise projections.
Some countries like Bangladesh and the Philippines stand to lose large portions of land; some small island nations like the Marshall Islands or the Maldives could effectively disappear.
The U.S. Department of Defense has called climate change “an urgent and growing threat to our national security, contributing to increased natural disasters, refugee flows, and conflicts over basic resources such as food and water,” according to a report this year.
Yet climate change does not make one a refugee, a designation for people forced to leave their home countries because of war, persecution or other violence. Someone seeking refuge from environmental disaster cannot apply for refugee status, lacks protection under the U.N. High Convention for Refugees and can be sent back to their countries of origin without question at any time.
The issue may remain unresolved through the two-week summit in Paris, aimed at hammering out a new treaty to limit global warming and deal with its effects. The U.S. is among the countries that oppose addressing migration issues in the treaty.
“This is actually becoming a fast-developing disaster,” said Harjeet Singh, the international policy manager for the advocacy group Action Aid International. “The world is still not talking enough about the climate migration that is going to happen.”
New Zealand deported a man back to the tiny South Pacific island nation of Kiribati earlier this year after its Supreme Court dismissed his appeal — the world’s first — for asylum as a climate refugee.
Some in vulnerable countries fear they could face the same hostile reception that Syrian war refugees have received from some countries.
“What’s happening now in Europe with all these refugees will be a small thing compared to what will happen when climate change takes effect,” Marshall Islands President Christopher Loeak told The Associated Press in his nation’s capital of Majuro.
Yet, many of them believe rich nations should shoulder most of the responsibility.
“The U.N. protocol on refugees has to be revised, and responsibility for climate change migrants has to be taken by the developed countries, who are responsible for climate emissions,” said Rezaul Karim Chowdhury, head of a Bangladeshi organization that aims to help people affected by climate change called COAST. “This is a matter of these countries’ survival.” Katy Daigle, New Delhi, AP