It is time to open a discussion on Europe’s role in the protection of climate refugees.
Climate change is a human-rights as well as an ecological crisis. As highly polluting human activities, primarily the burning of fossil fuels, critically overheat the planet and wreak havoc on natural ecosystems, human societies and economies, an enormous injustice is occurring.
The impacts of the climate crisis are vastly unequal, widening the gap between the high-emitting economies and the world’s poorest. It is damaging the fundamental human rights of those least responsible. Yet the rights of its invisible victims—those persons and communities whose only survival option is to move away from their damaged motherlands—go unrecognised.
Biblical exodus
Dry wells, unbearable heatwaves, barren soils, lost crops, killer typhoons, fewer fish, non-stop floods, food of the day harder to secure, vanishing communities and homes. These are the stories of people from regions highly exposed to climate disasters, whose adaptation capacity is low and dependence on natural ecosystems and resources particularly pronounced.
Policy-makers around the world can with high certainty expect that ‘even at low levels of warming, climate change will disrupt the livelihoods of tens to hundreds of millions of additional people in regions with high exposure and vulnerability and low adaptation in climate-sensitive regions, ecosystems and economic sectors’. With equal certainty, politicians can anticipate that ‘the world will witness a mass exodus of entire populations on a biblical scale’, in the words of the United Nations secretary-general, António Guterres.
In a recently published report, two Greek civil-society organisations, the Greek Council for Refugees and WWF Greece, argue that Europe needs to address climate-induced displacement coherently and to allow its climate-policy and human-rights acquis to mature—addressing the deficit in legal protection for persons displaced due to climate change and championing the development of an international protection framework. The European Union, rooted in humanitarian principles, should lead in aiding climate refugees, honouring its values as a human-rights leader. By extending rights of asylum to climate refugees, Europe could set a global example and create international standards.
The sixth assessment report by the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) indicates that a temperature increase of 2-4C on preindustrial levels would inevitably lead to forced migration from vulnerable regions. Estimates suggest cross-border migration could surpass one billion, with Africa, Asia and north America facing climate extremes, leading to displacement due to overheating, malnutrition and other impacts. The IPCC predicts rising displacement driven by intensified precipitation, flooding, cyclones, drought and sea-level rise.
Initially, climate-induced migration was seen as an adaptation strategy. It is however increasingly recognised as a ‘loss and damage’ response. Unlike migrants who seek better opportunities, climate refugees are forced to flee due to catastrophic conditions, making their displacement a matter of survival rather than choice.
Differently classified
Refugees and migrants are legally classified as different groups, their rights framed differently. Only those persons who are awarded the status of refugee are entitled to international protection, based on the Geneva Refugee Convention of 1951 and its 1967 protocol.
As extreme weather events and slower-onset changes cause catastrophic declines in living conditions, the international community needs however to generate a legal framework for persons left with no other option but migration elsewhere. Granting refugee rights to persons forced out of their countries by the climate crisis would be a fundamental first step towards a protection and assistance system addressing the prospect of massive climate-induced displacement—before it becomes a humanitarian crisis.
Seeds of temporary-protection arrangements exist in the legal systems of some European countries. Laws in Cyprus, Italy and Finland prohibit deportation of persons to countries in which their lives would be at risk due to environmental disasters. Such protection is however haphazard, with a ‘general lack of uniformity at the international level’.
Three pillars
An international protection system for climate refugees should be based on three pillars, all benefiting from a leading European role. First, globally, the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) should take the lead in pursuing an additional protocol, on climate refugees, to be added to the Geneva Convention.
Key issues would be:
- definition: climate refugees should be defined as ‘persons who involuntarily leave their country of nationality, or the country in which they reside, because of gradual or sudden changes in their environment related to at least one of the adverse effects of climate change (sea-level rise, extreme weather events, drought and water scarcity), and are unable or unwilling to return to it’;
- protecting children: specific provisions would be needed for the rights of children to healthcare and social services, family unity, safety and access to education, while protecting them from discrimination and exploitation;
- attribution mechanism: climate-attribution science should provide the basis for attributing disasters to climate change, with the IOM and the IPCC overseeing which parts of the world are in a state of climate emergency so that states can assess temporary-protection claims.
Secondly, at EU level, a framework for the protection of climate refugees should be developed, modelled on the temporary-protection-status directive first implemented in 2022 following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Temporary protection should cover rights to employment, access to education for all, vocational training, proper housing, social assistance and medical care.
Finally, given the critical significance of the Mediterranean as a migration route—sadly a deadly one for tens of thousands of people on the move—it will be important for the EU governments of the region to undertake bold initiatives that will allow a humane and orderly response to an impending humanitarian crisis resulting from sudden massive displacement of people from regions stricken by brutal climate disasters. Such an initiative could be taken in the context of the EU MED9 group.
Addressing the loss and damage caused by the climate crisis is the responsibility and moral obligation of the world’s developed economies, whose historically heavy footprint on the planet’s climate and natural resources has wought vastly unequal effects on those least to blame. This is a particularly challenging undertaking—especially in relation to migration flows reasonably expected to rise—as the world’s weakest economies in the global south are hit hardest by the severe impacts of the climate crisis.
Theodota Nantsou is head of policy at WWF Greece, her focus a socially just transition to climate neutrality. She is a member of Greece’s National Commission for Human Rights and the Scientific Committee on Climate Change. She holds a masters in environmental ethics.
Konstantinos Vlachopoulos is a researcher at the Greek Council for Refugees. He has a masters in international relations. His research focus is on immigration and security policies.