Climate induced migration is a concept used to describe how climate

change impacts on migration trends by altering the conditions of

human settlements through natural disasters and water & food scarcity,

making the settlements unhabitable, and forcing people to leave their

homes and nations (UNESCO, 2017). People displaced from their

homeland due to climate induced migration are often categorized as

Climate Migrants or Climate Refugees (GGP, 2012). Both concepts,

although with different considerations, encompass groups of people

seen as a security threat by the nations that receive them.

Postcolonialism, an IR theory focused on examining how societies in the

formerly colonized regions of the world experience international

relations (Neir, 2017), offers an interesting approach to this situation

by questioning why migrant human beings are seen as a security threat.

This IR theory also shows how colonialism, class, and race end up being

critical for the understanding of this new challenge which comes to test

the limits of national and global governance as well as international

cooperation (Podesta, 2019). Through the lens of Postcolonialism, the

following essay will analyze how climate refugees, often poor and

racialized, are seen as a security threat to the western culture and

hegemony while being a result of western industrialization and modern

imperialism, therefore becoming destabilizing forces both in developed

and developing nations.

In 2018, the World Bank estimated that three regions, Latin America,

sub-Saharan Africa, and Southeast Asia, would generate 143 million

climate migrants by 2050 (Kumari, 2018). It is not surprising that most

of the climate refugees come from some of the poorest, formerly

colonized, regions of the world. The 2014 Special Rapporteur on

extreme poverty and human rights, Philip Alston, even compared the

wealth gap that divides the developed and developing nations to a

“climate apartheid” where the wealthy of the world can pay

technologies and tools to escape or reduce the consequences of climate

change: extreme weather, hunger and conflict, while the rest of the

world is left to suffer (Alston, 2019). While countries like Japan can

tackle the effects of climate change by using their economic resources

to create resilient cities, other nations are left defenseless to these

situations. For example, the 12.5-metre-high seawalls surrounding

coastal city of Rikuzentakata built in Japan after the devastating

earthquake and tsunami of March 2011 (Swart, 2019), can in no way be

compared to the current vulnerability of Haiti even a decade after the

magnitude 7 earthquake of January 2010 (Savarrd, Sael, & Clormeus,

2020).

Race also plays a significant role in the differentiated impact of climate

change, even inside industrialized countries like the United States,

where people of color are four times more likely than white people to
die or get sick due to breathing polluted air (Newkirk, 2018). In South

Africa, after the drought that affected Cape Town and left 4 million

people at the risk of having no water, the most affected sector was not

the industrial or agricultural sector protected by the government, nor

the mostly-white wealthy communities that found the solution in

ordering desalination machines to make groundwater drinkable, but the

mostly-black communities like Guguletu that have long been

marginalized (Sieff, 2018). After colonization and during the decades of

white-minority rule, black people were forcibly relocated there. And

even though Guguletu was part of a landmark moment in the struggle

against apartheid (Wilson, 1999), the neighborhood remained poor and

neglected, up to the 2018 drought were the communal taps, each

shared by about 200 people, got closed down (Sieff, 2018).

Nevertheless, some authors argue that there is no such thing as climate

refugees, and that the concept of climate-induced migration has been

promoted as a way to depoliticize the actions, or lack of actions, of

developing nations' governments over reducing poverty and inequality

(Hass, 2020). They argue that climate change does not prove to have a

direct impact on migration, and that is rather used as a way to shift the

blame from poor public policies and unpopular actions to environmental

or climate factors beyond their control. They argue that natural hazards

created by climate change not always result in a disaster, the only do so

when the hazard hits in a context of social vulnerability (Oliver-Smith &

Hoffman, 2002). This way, it can be convenient for governments to use

environment as an excuse to displace people. For example, the

government of Maldives recycled controversial proposals for the

resettlement of the population dispersed over 200 islands into 15

islands as to reduce the costly provision of resources and services to

the dispersed populations, by rebranding the proposals as solutions to

the sea level rise and climate change (Kothari, 2013).

Despite the political usage of climate refugees, the indirect effects of

climate change on migration cannot be underplayed. While climate

change may not be a direct cause of mass migration, it intensifies

challenges like limited access to clean water, food scarcity, agricultural

shortages, and violent conflicts and can therefore become a significant

push factor in human migration (Podesta, 2019). For sub-Saharan

Africa, the exacerbation of extreme weather events is a profoundly

destabilizing force, with particularly devastating effects in the Sahel

region. The Sahel region is an arid strip of land that is under the Sahara

Dessert, it is also one of the poorest regions in the world and home to

various fragile states (UN, 2020). Its main subsistence is a farming

economy that is significantly reliant on the Lake Chad Basin, however

the lake lost 90% of its water mass from 1963 to 2013, creating issues

for most of the 25 million residents in the Basin who depend on the lake
in some form (Usigbe, 2019). The drought at the Chad Lake is one of

the most acute and drastic examples of Sub-Saharan Africa's

vulnerability to climate change, as well as an example of how the

inability to mitigate the effects of the climate crisis will continue to

increase other issues, like poverty, inequality and even extremist

insurgencies, such as Boko Haram (Plan-International, 2018). Thanks to

the loss of arable land created by desertification and erratic rainfall,

many people living at the Sahel region have entered in an economic

despair that terrorist groups like Boko Haram prey on as a recruitment

strategy. Due to the exacerbated conflicts and lack of resources, the

Lake Chad crisis has displaced 2.3 million people, half of them being

children (Plan-International, 2018).

While some countries suffer the effects of droughts, others face a

disastrous reality, one were their homes and land may go underwater

due to the sea-level rise. In these cases, the argument that climate

refugees are an excuse and not a cause of mass migration are not

applicable. There is no way that nations, like the home country of the

Teitiota Family, the family that tried to become the world’s first

recognized climate refugees, can survive disappearing due to climate

change (McDonald, 2015). Teitiota Family’s country, the Republic of

Kiribati, is set to be one of the first nations to disappear if the current

rising sea-levels continue, in 10 to 15 years, as most of the islands that

conform the Republic of Kiribati will go underwater, leaving 100,000

people without a home (BBC News, 2020). Despite the alerts from the

government of Kiribati, and the 4 year long legal battle by the Teitiota

family, New Zealand denied the refugee status, explaining that,

although it is true that in 10 to 15 years the homeland of Teitiota may

disappear, this time could allow the Republic of Kiribati to intervene,

with the assistance of the international community, to take measures to

protect and, where necessary, relocate its population (BBC News,

2020).

The reaction of New Zealand was expected, the idea of “Climate

Refugees” and “Climate Migrants” has troubled the international

community, especially the United Nations, for many years. While some

argue that opening the 1951 Refugee Convention might weaken the

refugee statues and that focusing on the rights of people displaced by

climate change may erase the efforts on preventive measures (Lonesco,

2018). Others believe that the international recognition of climate

migrants or climate refugees may encourage countries to create new

legal processes to document and manage climate migrants (McDonnell,

2018). Despite the efforts of migrant advocates and researchers, the

U.N. official leading the migration compact Louise Arbour explained to

the European Union that the document would not give specific legal
international protection to climate-induced migrants (McDonnell,

2018).

Although climate refugees pose different challenges than those that

travel due to persecution and other traditional drivers recognized in the

1951 UN Refugee Convention, the international community has decided

to ignore the situation. The current anti-immigrant sentiment and the

growing wave of nationalism has made it even harder for countries like

the U.S or those in Europe to enter the discussion.

On a general idea of migration, the idea of “Others” that do not “belong

to the European civilization” going into the continent is seen as an

invasion, a threat to the European values and a waste of their

“imperially acquired” wealth and resources (Bhambra,2015). The

migrant becomes a postcolonial subject that challenges the political and

legal boundaries, disrupting the European way of living. In order for

Europe to continue looking like the bastion of equality and the

promotion of universal multicultural rights, while denying the entrance

of migrants, the continent has had to create a narrative of crisis,

framing the situation as one that requires emergency legislation in

response to the dehumanized mass “swarms” of migrants invading the

continent (ODwyer, 2018). This is the case of the Dublin regulations, a

European union law that is said to seek the examination of application

of asylum while rapidly determining the Member State responsible for

the asylum claim (European Union, 2003). Nevertheless, these

regulations have been criticized by migrant advocates, arguing that

these conceptualize refugees and migrants as a threat and therefore

should be contained (ODwyer, 2018).

Brexit, the French party Front National and the Austrian Freedom Party

are only some examples of the multiple list of Far-Right parties that

have used this same idea as a way to foster support for their parties

(Davis, 2017). Mass migration has coincided with the re-assertion of

national identities in the continent, manifesting nationalism as a way of

justifying the “security measures” created to maintain the opposing

identity, the otherness of non-EU nationals, out (Stokholm, 2016).

The dehumanization and the creation of the “others” as non-white,

ethnic, immigrants has also manifested into more border controls,

surveillance and the reproduction of racial hierarchies (ODwyer, 2018).

While nationals can move freely across Schengen borders, those

categorized as a risk due to their identities face discrimination at the

European borders. Frantz Fanon describes this categorization as an

expression of the power these nations have on the body of the migrants,

the same way it was shown during colonialism (ODwyer, 2018).

Therefore, it doesn’t matter if developed nations are responsible for

79% of historical carbon emissions, refugees and migrants are

continuously shown their otherness is not welcome, making climate

refugees become victims of the same international system that fails to

take responsibility for them (CGD, 2018).

It is then in the hands of those more severely affected by climate

change the responsibility to act. Not only is it important to start

pressing international institutions to include the concept of climate

migrants to the 1951 Refugee Convention, it is also important to start

asking for reparations from colonialsm and the climate crisis.

The proposed solution through postcolonialism is to create a Climate

Displacement Fund. For the proposed solution two proposals were

taken into consideration:

1. To add the fund as a subdivision of the Green Climate Fund, or

2. To create a separated fund where the redistribution of the

reparations, overseed by a specialized council conformed by

leaders of the developing countries involved.

Considering that the Green Climate Fund was stablished by a

hierarchal international system, a postcolonial solution would require

that a new council is created, with and by representatives of developing

nations, as well as political minorities strongly affected by climate

change, like indigenous people and rural workers. The main objective of

said fund would be to utilize the economic resources recovered through

reparations to create resilient cities, "climate-friendly towns" and the

relocation of humans affected by climate crisis. Even tough developed

nations may not completely agree with the idea of supplying

reparations, they must be reminded of their historical responsibility, as

well as informed about the benefits of reducing the chances of a mass

migration event. These shall not erase the already stablished

agreements on climate change, but become and additional measure to

international cooperation. Only then can a historical and climate justice

be brought to previously colonized nations and communities around the

world.

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