The climate crisis is also a humanitarian crisis:environmental migrants and the recognition of their rights

https://www.valigiablu.it/crisi-climatica-migranti-ambientali/

Ioane Teitiota is a man originally from the island of Tarawa, in the Republic of Kiribati, a dot on the map in the center of the Pacific that represents a small constellation of coral atolls and islets.A paradise of white beaches and crystal clear sea whose islands are the first on the planet, every day, to see the sunrise, the first to celebrate every new year, but which could soon disappear because the sea is swallowing them.

For this reason, in 2015 Teitiota he decided to leave.Coastal erosion was making his home unlivable:the lands were becoming salinised, cultivating or raising animals was impossible because there was less and less fresh water.With the water, the land on which to stand, to have a home, to live also decreased:the sea was eating everything, causing discontent to grow and, with it, a climate of violence due to the scarcity of land.

Teitiota goes to New Zealand where he applies for international protection:his and his family's lives are put at risk by the consequences of climate change, he asks to be welcomed and protected.His request was rejected five years later, at the beginning of 2020, when the UN Human Rights Committee states that the reasons are valid but that the Republic of Kiribati is already implementing interventions to guarantee him, his family and his fellow citizens a correct relocation.But if Teitiota's story ended in rejection because his country is already intervening to protect him, other and more recent cases tell us different stories.

Milon is a Bangladeshi citizen born and raised in Dhaka, his life was soon turned upside down by the impacts of climate change.He was in his early twenties when floods brought his family to their knees, forcing them to go into debt and sell the land from which they earn their livelihood.But it's not enough.Milon then tries to leave, incurring further debts.He first looks for work in Libya, then somehow arrives in Italy, where he requests asylum.

As if by default, his request was initially rejected, but then, unexpectedly, the Court of L'Aquila accepted Milon's appeal and recognized humanitarian protection for environmental reasons.In the text of the appeal, edited by the lawyer Chiara Maiorano, climate changes are cited as the reason for socio-economic imbalances, affirming a principle that is still anomalous for our jurisprudence:climate change violates human rights, those affected must therefore be protected.

Rainer Maria Baratti deals with climate change and migration.Specializing in the legal side, he helped found Large Movements APS, of which he is vice-president.Large Movements is an organization that focuses its action on the dissemination of humanitarian and international law.Commenting on the stories of Milon and Tetiota, he explains a Blue suitcase:“Although there is currently no real recognition of the figure of the “climate refugee”, what was stated about the Milon and Tetiota cases is of absolute relevance.The first represents an important and courageous first step in our legal system, while the second has opened a path towards the recognition of the protection of those fleeing environmental degradation.It is important to highlight that our Court of Cassation, with ordinance no.5022 of 12 November 2020, referred to the opinion of the UN Committee on the Tetiota case".The Court of Cassation, Baratti further explains, reiterated that States have the obligation to guarantee the right to life, even if external conditions are of environmental degradation:“environmental factors influence the vulnerability of the individual and, therefore, the degradation of the environment corresponds to the prejudice of multiple fundamental rights which constitute the right to life.Consequently, it is the State's obligation to protect such individuals and not reject them to countries where these rights cannot be guaranteed since the right to life also includes the right to a 'dignified existence'."

The story of Ioane, that of Milon, are individual events of a much larger phenomenon that is upsetting, and will progressively upset more and more, the balance of the planet.Faced with climate change and its consequences, borders, regulations and barriers are disappearing.Millions of people are marching because they are physically unable to live in the places where they were born.They are places where the sea is rising, extreme climate events cause constant devastation, the heat suffocates the land, which no longer bears fruit.

Maria Marano, an expert in international development cooperation and one of the editors of the dossier, is aware of this.Environmental crises and forced migrations”, quoted from the ruling of the Court of L'Aquila on the Milon affair, which explains a Blue suitcase:“The climate crisis has already changed the morphology of our planet.Second a 2016 study, five small islands of the Solomon Islands archipelago, in the South Pacific, have been deleted from the geographic atlas due to rising sea levels as a result of global warming.These are uninhabited atolls, which does not reduce the severity of the problem.In fact, inhabited islands such as Nuatambu, which has around 25 families and has lost half of its habitable area since 2011, and Kale, where the few remaining inhabitants live in stilt houses, are also at risk.In this area of the world since 1994, sea levels have risen by 7-10 millimeters per year, among the highest increases recorded on a global scale."

Marano underlines how in certain areas of the planet climate change worsens the liveability of contexts already affected by war:“Since 1950, Afghanistan has seen an average annual temperature increase of 1.8°C, with increasingly frequent periods of severe drought.At the same time, decades of conflict have led to the destruction of the few water, energy and transport infrastructures built in the late 1970s.An enormous damage to agriculture, which is the main source of income for over 60% of Afghans.The Climate Security report highlighted that Afghanistan is affected by a dramatic food and humanitarian crisis, over 3.5 million people live in conditions of food insecurity.These are factors that push the population to migrate.According to thelatest IDMC report By 2021, 1.4 million Afghans have been displaced by climate events.A further risk, according to UNEP, is that farmers may abandon crops such as wheat, which require a lot of water, in favor of opium poppies, which are more resistant to drought."

Often climate migrations are internal movements, they concern people who move from one part of their countries to another because they are progressively chased away by an increasingly aggressive climate.Generally they are the poorest, both on the macro - developing countries that can hardly bear the consequences of the upheavals - and on the micro, because studies show that it is the most disadvantaged sections of the population that pay the worst price.In any case, it is never about who caused those phenomena.

That climate change is the direct consequence of this economic system is a fact now crystallized in the collective consciousness of millions of people, scientists, economists and analysts.The unbridled growth that has brought so much prosperity to one part of the world has first starved and defrauded another, and is now having its consequences on this one.So he explains to Blue suitcase Salvatore Altiero, environmental journalist and editor with Maria Marano of the aforementioned report:“From 1970 to today, the extraction of natural resources has more than tripled while annual emissions of greenhouse gases have grown by 60% from 1990 to 2015 and by 1.5% per year in the last decade.Extractivism is therefore the main driving force of global GDP and at the same time pushes humanity towards the abyss of climate catastrophe.Benefits and responsibilities are not the same for everyone.The G20 states represent two thirds of global trade and 80% of GDP but, at the same time, 78% of global greenhouse gas emissions”.

“High-income countries – explains Altiero – represent 16% of the global population and consume on average the equivalent of 27 tonnes per capita of raw materials per year, 60% more than low-middle-income countries and more than thirteen times the level of the group of low-income countries.According to the report Confronting Carbon Inequality of Oxfam, the richest 10% of the world population, 630 million people, was responsible for 52% of global greenhouse gas emissions, almost a third (31%) of the carbon budget, the maximum limit not to be exceeded if it wants to exceed the average temperature of the pre-industrial era by more than 2°C.Over the same period, 3.1 billion people, the poorest half of the planet, were responsible for just 7% of global greenhouse gas emissions, equivalent to 4% of the carbon budget.”

Despite the evidence of the numbers, climate migration is still an issue on which it is easy to engage in populism.It was 2018 when, in response to the resolution of the European Parliament on climate migration, the Newspaper was titled “We missed the climate migrant.We will also welcome those fleeing from the heat";a few weeks later he was echoed by a tweet by Matteo Salvini:“Renzi and Di Maio in Europe voted for a resolution that introduces the figure of the "climate migrant", that's all that was missing."

However, the data dismantles any rhetoric of exclusion:There are millions of people who are forced to move, and there will be more and more.In September 2016 the World Bank published a study according to which 216 million people will take to the road by 2050;a new research, published in International Migration Review, presents an even more complex scenario.The team that worked on the report started from 16 different climate models and developed various drought scenarios between now and the end of the century.In particular, the study hypothesizes two possible scenarios, a "positive" one, in which the commitments undertaken at a global level with the Paris Agreements on the climate are respected, and a negative one in which instead we continue in the direction that has currently been undertaken by most countries in the world, in terms of energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions.

In the positive scenario there would be an increase in the phenomenon of 200%, in the negative one it would reach up to 500%.The countries affected by the movements will be Nigeria, Egypt, China, Turkey, Algeria, Mexico, Morocco and Venezuela, but it will be impossible to leave some of them:they are the states of the so-called "immobile migrants", those who would like to escape but cannot, among which, in 19th place, between Angola and South Africa, there is also Italy.

According to the 2022 edition of the global report drawn up byInternal Displacement Monitoring Centre, in 2021 there will be 59.1 million people living in internal displacement.This is yet another historical record, the previous year alone there were 55 million.In 2021, 38 million internal movements were reported, the highest number in the last decade after the records of 2020.Most displacements are due to disasters:in 2021 the number of migrations linked to these causes was 237 million, in 94% of cases it involved risks due to extreme climatic events.

And the forecasts for the next few years can only get worse, given that in the meantime the war in Ukraine has intervened and is exacerbating the already existing energy and food crises.

Speaking about the flow framework, Baratti explains:“Looking at Africa we can observe that more than 80% of migrations take place within the Ecowas area [English acronym of the Economic Community of West African States - Editor's note] and the first destinations are the most advanced economies on the continent.The African context, for example, raises many questions for the near future.Currently the major migratory routes develop through countries immersed in a complex mix of problems from an environmental, social and political point of view.In other words, there are fewer and fewer places that allow one to lead a dignified existence."

The jurist underlined how the impacts of climate change in contexts of particular social fragility create "multiple injustices and risks that increase exponentially based on sex, age or membership of a specific social or ethnic group.In addition to the international commitment to reduce greenhouse emissions, it is necessary to protect those who arrive in our country and to act in the countries of origin and transit of migration so that migration becomes a free choice and not the only option".

Preview image via Lo Spiegone

Licensed under: CC-BY-SA