In the world of migration law no one has successfully defined what a ‘climate refugee’ is. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees doesn’t endorse the term. Worse, the term ‘refugee’, as subscribed to by the 1951 Convention with its focus on fear of persecution, is unlikely to be of any value to those displaced by natural disasters or climate change – unless all concerned accept that ‘nature’ or ‘environment’ or ‘climate’ can be a persecutor.
Human mobility, compressed in the term ‘migration’, is not universal or linear – it defies a simple definition. Climate-induced migration is no less complex, and in reaching for the term ‘climate refugee’ the world risks overlooking the many interconnected issues driving people to move from one place to another, including unsustainable development, natural disasters and climate change.
From a geo-historical perspective, the decision to move from one place to another in order to escape risks and threats posed by environmental and climate change has been integral to human adaptation. And yet ‘climate refugees’ are flagged at times as a national security problem, when the issue of climate migration could just as easily have been approached and addressed, for example, as a ‘human rights’ or ‘development’ issue.
