How did we create 38 million climate refugees?
What we’re talking about regarding climate change refugees is total chaos, where natural disasters are more intense and more often. The world is giving us this warning of more horror to come.
We spoke about the Environmental Justice Foundation’s (EJF) ‘No place like home’ campaign in the blog on 13 February. Now I can tell you a bit more about it and show you the interview I did with EJF in support of the project.
Every year climate change contributes to the deaths of over 300,000 people, seriously affects a further 325 million people, and causes economic losses of US$125 billion. Four billion people are vulnerable to the effects of climate change and 500-600 million people – around 10% of the planet’s human population are at extreme risk. Climate change has been recognized as a fundamental threat to human rights. Developing countries stand to bear over nine-tenths of the climate change burden meaning 98% of the seriously affected people and 99% of all deaths from weather-related disasters, along with over 90% of the total economic losses.
Recent disasters show the potential scale of the problems resulting from climate-related events: 1.5 million homes were destroyed in Bangladesh by Cyclone Sidr in 2007; floods in Pakistan displaced around 1.8 million people, and damaged or destroyed up to 1.6 million homes and 6.8 million acres of crops in 2010; more than 950,000 Somali refugees were displaced to neighbouring countries between January 2011 and January 2012 as a result of the complex East Africa crisis. Experts estimate that there were more than 38 million people displaced by sudden onset, climate-related natural hazards in 2010. Climate refugees now outnumber refugees fleeing persecution and violence by more than three to one.
Unlike refugees recognized under the United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, climate refugees have no legal status. There is no legislation, agency or institution specifically mandated for their protection and assistance. No existing framework or institutions in the domain of migration, displacement or climate change specifically address the issue of climate refugees, and no international institution has a clear mandate to serve these people who so need human rights protection and humanitarian assistance.
EJF’s ‘No Place Like Home’ campaign is working to get the voices of those most vulnerable to climate change heard internationally, with the goal of securing a legally-binding instrument for the recognition, assistance and protection of people who often have nowhere to go and no means to survive.
I have designed t-shirts to support EJF’s ‘No Place Like Home’ campaign. They have a 90% smaller carbon footprint than an average cotton t-shirt ; they are organic, ethically-made and manufactured by renewable green energy.
You can get a t-shirt and support EJF from 4th May at Selfridges, Vivienne Westwood (instore and online www.viviennewestwood.co.uk ) and at www.ejfoundation.org/shop.
Read more about it in ‘The Stylist’ http://www.stylist.co.uk/fashion/vivienne-westwood-takes-on-climate-change#image-rotator-1
Hi Vivienne, thanks for all your valiant efforts in using your platform to effect positive change with regards to environmental issues!
I run a popular site called Green Global Travel that focuses on Ecotourism, Nature/Wildlife Conservation, Eco News and Sustainable Living, and I’d love to talk you about doing an interview or guest post for our site. Our previous interviewees include Jimmy Carter, Al Gore, Ted Turner and Jane Goodall, so you’d be in great company.
Please let me know whom I’d need to speak with to set something up, as I’d love to talk to you more about climate change and the “No Place Like Home” project.
Thanks,
Bret Love
GreenGlobalTravel@gmail.com
Comment by Bret @ Green Global Travel on 07/05/2012 at 1:42 pm
‘Climate change has been recognized as a fundamental threat to human rights’ but sadly it has also been obscured by the duplicity of certain anti-climate change institutions- or at least this is how I have experienced things.
Al Gore, for example, profits more than any other person or business or group (including those he purports to support) from carbon credits- an innovation of his own invention. The cunning within the negotiation of the kyoto agreement concerning the status of Russia is another example.
That this issue has been overlooked, seems unsurprising, in so far as the issue of human rights is so often overlooked. Only two of the five permanent UN members have accepted the international declaration of human rights and neither of them follow it really.
For this reason it is only very recently have I come to understand the importance of the climate change issue.
I must admit, it was this blog and finding the EJF through it that inspired this change, so thank-you.
My main line of thought when reading about this issue is how much of a boon to humanity it would be if the philosophy of Peter Singer were actualised. Environmental justice could surely be wrought with a growth in not only human rights but an extension of rights to animals. Singer posits a rejection of opulence in favour of extending our hand to those less fortunate via a sort of salary sacrifice. He also suggests education as a way of addressing overpopulation.
Perhaps it is overly sentimental but I am sure wildlife suffers the detrimental effects of climate related disasters and hazards almost as much as man. Human dislocation catalyses the evisceration of the natural world more than almost anything else.
I am a philosophy student (or will be beginning this September) the pragmatic issues I find far harder to grasp than the concepts elucidated in the gaia hypothesis for example. It seems to follow on nicely from Hume’s ‘natural self regulating’ life, I read some Lovelock a while back when environmental ethics were an essay topic in an exam.
If sanctuary were provided for climate refugees, do you think it would be some sort of permanent establishment? (somewhere they could be relocated to until their old abode had been reconstructed) Or a contingent settlement constructed in the area of the disaster?
Would it be possible to extend this campaign to lobbying our government to extend foreign aid with specific reference to climate refugees rather than lavishing it on already flourishing foreign industries?
Comment by Chloe Campbell on 07/05/2012 at 8:29 pm
Hello and thank you for this article. So-called environmentally induced migration is multi-level problem. According to Essam El-Hinnawi definition form 1985 environmental refugees as those people who have been forced to leave their traditional habitat, temporarily or permanently, because of a marked environmental disruption (natural or triggered by people) that jeopardised their existence and/or seriously affected the quality of their life. The fundamental distinction between `environmental migrants` and `environmental refugees` is a standpoint of contemporsry studies in EDPs.
According to Bogumil Terminski it seems reasonable to distinguish the general category of environmental migrants from the more specific (subordinate to it) category of environmental refugees.
Environmental migrants, therefore, are persons making a short-lived, cyclical, or longerterm change of residence, of a voluntary or forced character, due to specific environmental factors. Environmental refugees form a specific type of environmental migrant.
Environmental refugees, therefore, are persons compelled to spontaneous, short-lived, cyclical, or longer-term changes of residence due to sudden or gradually worsening changes in environmental factors important to their living, which may be of either a short-term or an irreversible character.
According to Norman Myers environmental refugees are “people who can no longer gain a secure livelihood in their homelands because of drought, soil erosion, desertification, deforestation and other environmental problems, together with associated problems of population pressures and profound poverty”.
Comment by Anne Hicks on 01/06/2012 at 8:07 pm