Seeking recognition for climate refugees: a decolonial environmental approach
| Autor | Francesca Rosignoli |
| Cargo del Autor | Universitat Rovira i Virgili (URV) |
| Páginas | 12-32 |
CAPÍTULO 1
SEEKING RECOGNITION FOR CLIMATE REFUGEES:
A DECOLONIAL ENVIRONMENTAL APPROACH
FRANCESCA ROSIGNOLI
Universitat Rovira i Virgili (URV)
1. INTRODUCTION
On Sept. 13, 2021, the World Bank updated the 2019 Groundswell re-
port warning that climate change could force 216 million people across
six world regions to move by 2050 (Clement et al., 2021). This projec-
tion is confirmed by the current trend reported by the Internal Displace-
ment Monitoring Center (IDMC). In 2020, new displacements
amounted to ca 40.5 million, with disasters responsible for over three
times compared to conflicts and weather-related events causing 98 per-
cent of all disaster displacement (IDMC, 2021). Despite the magnitude
of climate migration and displacement, people who find themselves in
refugee-like situations due to environmental degradation are not recog-
nized at the international law level.
At first glance, the reason for such an exclusion is that “climate refu-
gees” are not (yet) an identifiable and measurable group of people. The
lack of a common working definition of a climate refugee due to the
conceptual unclarity that surrounds this emerging figure would prevent
from providing for a legal definition, and a clear method to establish
who should be included in calculations (Rosignoli, 2022b). Further, the
heterogeneous and multicausal nature of climate-induced migration
suggests that people rarely flee only because of environmental degra-
dation. Thus, since human mobility is driven by various factors, it is
very difficult to disentangle the environmental from social, economic,
and political factors. All this makes difficult to isolate climate refugees
as an identifiable and measurable set of people and, therefore, a partic-
ular social group. On top of that, the 1951 Geneva Convention’s
definition of a refugee does not include environmental degradation
among the grounds of persecution that legitimate the recognition of ref-
ugee status. Also, it requires that a person finds herself outside of
his/her home country for requesting refugee status, while people fleeing
environmental disruptions rarely cross the border (Clement et al., 2021;
Rigaud et al., 2018). According to the current legal definition, indeed,
a refugee is a person who
owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, re-
ligion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political
opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable, or owing
to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that coun-
try; or who, not having a nationality and being outside the country of
his former habitual residence as a result of such events, is unable or,
owing to such fear, is unwilling to return to it.
On closer inspection, however, these limitations might be overcome by
shifting the focus on how we interpret the term “persecution” as well as
how to trigger non-refoulement obligations in the context of climate
change and environmental disasters. In this regard, several doctrinal en-
deavors by scholars (Andrade, 2008; Coles, 1990; Cooper, 1997;
Gemenne, 2017; Hathaway, 2017; Shacknove, 1985) and the United
Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) have extensively
worked in this direction and clarified different forms of harm that
amount to persecution (Andrade, 2008). Among them, it worth men-
tioning “a combination of numerous harms none of which alone consti-
tutes persecution but which, when considered in the context of a general
atmosphere in the applicant’s country, produces a cumulative effect that
creates a well-founded fear of persecution” (Andrade, 2008, p. 124).
An “environmental persecution” would well suit this form, so that a
broader interpretation of the current definition of a refugee potentially
including climate refugees would also seem “technically” possible.
Not surprisingly, the possibility to trigger non-refoulement obligations
when environmental disruptions are threatening/jeopardizing the rights
to life of people living in countries of origin turning uninhabitable1 has
1 For a critical examination of the Teitiota v. New Zealand case, see (Simon Behrman & Kent,
2020; McAdam, 2020; Rosignoli, 2022b).
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