According to Grist’s advice columnist on green living Umbra, the word “refugee” fits the idea of millions of people being forced to relocate due to climate change.
The Institute for Economics and Peace, has recently estimated that in 2017, 18 million people were forced to leave their homes due to natural disasters, and those numbers are going to increase. That same report underlined that currently almost 1 billion people live in areas of “very high” or “high” climate exposure, which could result in displacements by climate change in the future.
Another report (2018 World Bank) estimated that by 2050, there would be 143 million climate change-driven migrants from the regions of Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, and southeast Asia alone.
However, most legal scholars and international lawyers will say that most people who move or are forced to move due to climate disasters are not technically refugees. This is because the word “refugee” has a specific legal definition with certain specific criteria that need to be met to be able to apply for asylum in a new country.
In 2015 a man from the Pacific Island nation of Kiribati, applied for asylum as a refugee in New Zealand under the claim that he and his family were endangered by rising seas. The claim was rejected by New Zealand with the statement that it was still possible to live within the nation of Kiribati, regardless of whether his particular home had been considered uninhabitable.
Umbra says that rich and industrialized countries produce the huge part of the emissions that have resulted in the current crisis. Less industrialized, poorer nations are now paying the price in the form of climate transformations and resource scarcity. It\’s time for those wealthy countries to have some historical obligation to help those they’ve harmed.
So the term may not be “climate refugees” or “climate migrants” or “climate victims,” but just people who deserve some justice.