Ciaran O'Carroll, Amnesty student activist reports from Copenhagen on Climate Change

Climate Change Refugees Need International Recognition:

By the year 2050 global warming is likely to cause 150 million people to abandon their homes and become refugees according to a new report by the Environmental Justice Foundation.  In 2008 alone, more than 20 million people were displaced by climate-related natural disasters, including 800,000 people by cyclone Nagris in Asia, and almost 80,000 by heavy floods and rains in Brazil. However the people that are being  forced to move due to climate change currently have no adequate recognition in international law which denies them political, legal, and human rights.
 
“We must not lose sight of existing human rights principles in the tug and push of international climate change negotiations. A human rights lens reminds us there are reasons beyond economics and enlightened self-interest for states to act on climate change…”
Mary Robinson, former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.
 
In  Africa, an estimated 10 million people have migrated or been displaced over the last two decades mainly because of environmental degradation and desertification. Low level islands in the Pacific and Indian oceans are acting as the canary in the world’s coal mine, quickly sinking into the ocean one by one.
On November 25, 2003, the Papua New Guinean government authorized the government-funded total evacuation of the Carteret islands, effectively making them the worlds first official climate change refugees. The Maldives (population 300,00) is set to become the first country to literally disappear off the face of the earth. The democratically-elected president, Mohamed Nasheed said If things go on as usual, “we will not live. We will die. Our country will not exist” during an underwater cabinet meeting held to highlight their plight in October 2009.
To add to the injustice to these poor displaced indigenous populations they also have some of the lowest per capita greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The 50 Least Developed Countries contribute less than 1 percent of global carbon emissions.
Almost two decades ago, the IPCC suggested that the “gravest effects of climate change may be those on human migration”. Environmental factors leading to migration may be fast occurring – such as more intense tropical cyclones – or longer-term, such as desertification, or sea level rises that inundates low-lying regions.
To date only $154 million has been disbursed by the UNFCCC to ameliorate the effects of climate change. In 2008, despite the onset of financial collapse, the nine biggest US banks alone paid US$32.6 billion in bonuses.
It is essential that international law be updated to protect climate refugees and given the same rights as refugees under the 1951 Geneva Convention. A new legal instrument, either a protocol under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change or a stand-alone convention has should be enacted around five basic principles:
 1. Planned and voluntary resettlement and reintegration (as opposed to ad hoc emergency relief responses).
2. Climate refugees should be treated the same as permanent immigrants as they cannot return to their home.
3. It must be tailored to entire group of people, including entire nations, as is the case with small island states.
4. Support for national governments to protect their people will be required (as opposed to the existing refugee regime).
 5. The protection of climate refugees must be seen as a global problem and a global responsibility. “In most cases, climate refugees will be poor and their own responsibility for the past accumulation of greenhouse gases will be small…the responsibility of the industrialized countries to do their share in financing, supporting and facilitating the protection and resettlement of climate refugees.