© IE Online Media Services Pvt Ltd
Tags:
Journalism of Courage
— Shamna Thacham Poyil
For perspective, the World Meteorological Organization documented over 600 extreme weather incidents in 2024, including 148 events described as “unprecedented” and 289 as “unusual”, resulting in 1,700 fatalities and the displacement of 8,24,000 individuals.
In the meantime, the Ecological Threat Register (ETR), published by the Institute for Economics and Peace, warns of severe risks from droughts, floods, hurricanes, rising sea levels, and melting glaciers due to escalating temperatures compounded by population growth, resource constraints, and food insecurity.
By 2050, 141 countries are projected to experience at least one major natural disaster, potentially affecting 200 million people and causing an unprecedented scale of human mobility and migration. But who exactly are climate refugees, and what legal protections, if any, do they have?
‘Climate refugees’ refer to those individuals or communities who are forced to migrate and seek refuge elsewhere due to ecological threats caused by climate change in their place of habitual residence. However, the word ‘climate refugees’ remains ambiguous due to the absence of a uniformly agreed upon definition.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) refrains from supporting the label “climate refugee”, preferring instead the expression “persons displaced due to climate change and disasters”, which it considers to be more precise. This has led to the proliferation of multiple terminologies like ‘environmentally displaced migrants’, ‘climate migrants’ or ‘disaster displaced migrants’, often used interchangeably.
However, one notable difference lies in cross-border migration, which is common among climate refugees. In contrast, other categories of displaced people may be internally displaced people, who flee their homes but might not have crossed the borders of their country of origin.
Moreover, the interlinkages between environmental, economic, social, and political drivers – including poverty, disease, governance failures, and conflict – make it impossible to attribute displacement solely to climate stressors. This further complicates the effort to craft a precise definition of “climate refugees”.
Notably, unlike traditional refugees, whose displacement is often attributed to persecution or states’ failure to provide protection, climate-induced refugees largely fall in grey areas in both international protection frameworks.
In 2015, an asylum application of Ioane Teitiota, a man from Kiribati (an island nation in the central Pacific Ocean), in New Zealand was rejected. He argued that rising sea-levels and other effects of climate change were making his homeland uninhabitable. However, his application was rejected – and upheld on later appeal – citing that the 1951 Refugee Convention demands a well-founded fear of persecution or political violence – criteria that do not extend to climate-induced environmental change.
Globally, the protection of refugees is governed by the 1951 Refugee Convention and its subsequent 1967 protocol, both of which have a restrictive definition of refugees. They take into account displacement due to persecution, wars, civil unrest or conflicts but do not recognise environmental causes or climate-related natural disasters as valid grounds for ‘refugee’ status.
Resultantly, unless climate-displaced induced displacements overlap with other forms of recognised persecution, such as war or conflict over natural resources, none of those fleeing climate disasters would receive any formal legal protection under provided by international refugee convention.
What complicates the case of climate refugees is the fact that the state itself is a victim of climate catastrophes. Such disasters deplete states’ resources and infrastructure, and render them unable, despite the intent, to provide adequate protection to their populations.
Unlike traditional refugees, whose displacement is usually prolonged and indefinite due to the unstable political situation at home, climate refugees experience varying durations of mobility, such as a temporary movement (if it is in response to floods) or permanent (in the case of relocating from areas lost to rising sea levels). In some instances, their movement could be pre-planned and implemented gradually in anticipation of the imminent ecological devastation, blurring the distinction between voluntary migration and forced displacement.
Individuals displaced by environmental change overwhelmingly come from the Global South, where their vulnerability to displacement is exacerbated by increased dependence on climate-sensitive agriculture and limited capacity to adapt. In Central America’s Dry Corridor, prolonged droughts paired with successive hurricanes from 2016 drove nearly 1.4 million indigenous youth, dependent on subsistence agriculture, to seek humanitarian assistance, and many had to cross borders to the United States.
In the Sahel, more than two million Burkinabé were displaced by early 2025 as advancing desertification intersected with armed conflicts. Brazil’s Northeast witnessed approximately 2.5 million flood-related displacements from 2008 to 2022, illustrating how alternating droughts and extreme rainfall events force recurrent migration. Meanwhile, low-lying Pacific atoll nations such as Kiribati and Tuvalu may require over US$10 billion in coastal defences by mid-century to safeguard land and enable communities to stay.
Coastal Bangladesh faces an existential threat, with projections indicating that by 2050 roughly 17 per cent of the Ganges-Brahmaputra delta could be submerged, jeopardizing the homes and livelihoods of up to 20 million people. Their influx into neighbouring India has already activated one of the largest migration corridors in the world.
In contrast to Teitiota’s appeal, a contemporaneous Tuvaluan family exposed to similar sea-level threats was granted permanent residency in New Zealand on discretionary humanitarian grounds, primarily due to established kinship ties rather than under any refugee instrument. This highlights the reliance on ad hoc mechanisms for climate-displaced persons.
In the absence of a legally binding international framework explicitly addressing climate-induced displacement, “soft law” instruments have emerged as key avenues of protection and cooperation. Policy initiatives like the Nansen Initiative (2012) and its successor, the Platform on Disaster Displacement (PDD), implemented the Agenda for the Protection of Cross-Border Displaced Persons in the Context of Disasters and Climate Change. It was endorsed in 2015 by over 100 States across the Pacific, Latin America and even Asia.
Although tools like humanitarian visas and regional relocation frameworks offered innovative yet practical guidance for addressing disaster- and climate-induced mobility, they lacked legal force and relied completely on voluntary state participation. Instruments such as the Global Compact on Refugees (2018) and the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (GCM) acknowledge climate change as a significant driver of displacement.
Nevertheless, these compacts are non-binding, relying instead on cooperation and dialogue rather than enforceable obligations. In the face of this international legal gap, regional initiatives have gained prominence. The Kampala Convention in Africa explicitly addresses internal displacement resulting from natural disasters, creating regional obligations on state parties.
Similarly, frameworks like the Pacific Islands Framework for Action on Climate Change (PIFACC) and Free Movement Agreements promote sub-regional cooperation, though their applicability largely remains confined to citizens within the region, limiting their scope for broader international protection.
Recent jurisprudential developments further reflect the evolving legal landscape. Notably, a 2020 UN Human Rights Committee ruling set a critical precedent by deeming it unlawful under international human rights standards to forcibly return individuals to regions severely threatened by climate impacts. By grounding its reasoning in the fundamental right to life, as articulated in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), this ruling signals potential pathways towards integrating climate displacement within existing human rights frameworks.
Hence, there is an urgent need for the global community to collectively recalibrate risk assessments and redesign climate adaptation and mitigation strategies with displacement at their core. Without this, well-meaning solutions like sea walls, green buffer zones, and upgraded coastal infrastructure risk triggering “climate gentrification” – displacing low-income communities as living costs surge, and ironically, creating more climate refugees.
Addressing this silent yet deepening crisis demands a dual lens: one that upholds both human rights imperatives and legitimate security considerations of the state. But above all, we must confront the triple gap that defines the climate refugee dilemma – a conceptual gap in how we define them, a legal gap in how we recognise them, and a policy gap in how we protect them. Unless these are urgently bridged, millions will continue to live and move in a state of legal invisibility, unseen by the very systems designed to safeguard human dignity.
Why is the term “climate refugee” considered ambiguous, and how does the UNHCR address this ambiguity?
What are the key limitations of the 1951 Refugee Convention in addressing climate-induced displacement?
How do regional initiatives like the Kampala Convention and the Pacific Islands Framework address climate displacement differently from global mechanisms?
Why is the Global South disproportionately affected by climate-induced displacement? Provide examples to support your answer.
How do “soft law” instruments like the Nansen Initiative and the Platform on Disaster Displacement fill the legal void for climate refugees? What are their limitations?
(Shamna Thacham Poyil is a Doctoral Research Scholar in the Department of Political Science, University of Delhi.)
Share your thoughts and ideas on UPSC Special articles with ashiya.parveen@indianexpress.com.
Subscribe to our UPSC newsletter and stay updated with the news cues from the past week.
Stay updated with the latest UPSC articles by joining our Telegram channel – IndianExpress UPSC Hub, and follow us on Instagram and X.
