International laws cannot cope with climate exiles

LONDON - International laws are inadequate to deal with the millions of people forecast to become exiles due to escalating climate change, the Foundation for International Environmental Law and Development (FIELD) warned Thursday.

Between 200 million and one billion people could become displaced by climate change by 2050. “As climate exiles have no standing in existing international law, this raises unprecedented legal challenges,” a FIELD spokesperson said here.

“There are currently no legal frameworks or guidelines that can provide assistance or protection for people crossing borders because of displacement due to climate change,” the spokesperson added.

Climate change is expected to hit developing countries the hardest. Its effects - food insecurity and more frequent weather-related disasters besides higher temperatures, rising sea levels - also pose risks for water supplies, causing chaos for millions of people.

Small islands are particularly vulnerable. The entire population of the Carteret Islands of Papua New Guinea, are the first people to be officially evacuated due to climate change. Others, such as Kiribati or the Marshall Islands, may disappear completely or become uninhabitable, making their populations stateless. Kiribati has already started searching for a new home for future generations.

Under current international law, any climate-induced, cross-border migrations from these areas would trigger little, if any, protection or provide aid.

FIELD director Joy Hyvarinen said: International refugee law focuses on those who are persecuted for political, racial or religious reasons. It was not designed for those who are left homeless by environmental pressures.

Migration in itself is not bad, but migration forced by climate change is a tragedy and the international legal framework needs to be adjusted to help climate exiles and deal with statelessness and compensation.

FIELD is a group of public international lawyers providing legal aid and pro bono services to small countries and communities that face environmental impacts.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has suggested that more than 600 million people currently living in low-lying coastal zones - 438 million in Asia and 246 million in least developed countries - will be directly at risk to potential threats of climate change in this century.

At a climate science summit in Copenhagen earlier this year, experts raised their earlier predictions of sea-level rise in this century to three times those given by the IPCC just two years ago.