Climate change could lead to 216 million people from sub-Saharan and North Africa, South, East and Central Asia, Latin America, the Pacific and Eastern Europe to be displaced within their countries by 2050 if "urgent measures" are not taken to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
This phenomenon of population exodus, known as climate migration, occurs to a greater or lesser extent in all parts of the world to the extent that the effects of climate change are global, as explained by the professor of Public International Law and International Relations at the Rovira y Virgili University (URV), in Spain, Susana Borràs.
In the case of Lanzarote and La Graciosa, the worst part of climate change has fallen on the coast: according to a report published by the Government of the Canary Islands last May, ten beach areas, totaling 34.4 kilometers, are at "high risk" due to the threat of this situation.
Extreme weather events, the main problem
The main cause of this problem lies in extreme weather events, which include both sudden impacts (hurricanes, cyclones, typhoons, strong storms, floods...) and slow-onset impacts (rising temperatures, drought, desertification, soil erosion...).
All of them cause the progressive disappearance and destruction of the livelihoods of millions of people and compromise their most basic rights: access to drinking water, food, health or housing.
Global data on cross-border displacement in the context of disasters is "limited", according to Borràs. On the other hand, there is more information regarding the number of internal displacements due to disasters linked to climate change, which is more than double the number of those who flee across borders as refugees for political reasons.
24.9 million displacements due to natural disasters in 2019
Thus, the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center has found that in 2019 nearly 1,900 disasters generated 24.9 million displacements in 140 countries and territories, the highest number recorded since 2012, which exceeds three times the number of displaced by conflict and violence.
There are certain countries that are more vulnerable and more exposed to this type of disaster, especially from the so-called Global South, which in turn are "the most impoverished, with less resilience and those that have contributed the least to generating global warming", explains Borràs.
Faced with this reality, according to the expert, countries should "make the issue visible and protect themselves", a fact that involves "strengthening policies and legal frameworks focused on a humanitarian and rights perspective by adopting, for example, a broader interpretation of the refugee status regulated in the Geneva Convention and its Protocols".
In addition, she indicates that humanitarian or climate visas should also be regulated to effectively protect these people, an action that would have to be accompanied by the application of the guarantee of non-return for those who cannot continue to live with dignity in their place of origin.
An issue ignored in international conferences
"The reality is that the issue of losses and damages, where the problem of climate migration should be addressed, has been systematically blocked or reduced to mere dialogues or parallel acts," says Borràs, and gives as an example that in the program of the 27th United Nations Conference on Climate Change of 2022 (COP27) does not include a thematic session for this phenomenon, but was addressed in a meeting within the financing sessions -held last November 9- and the day of science and youth and future generation -November 10-.
"Without a doubt, the suffering of many people who are dispossessed by the climate violence exerted by many enriched countries is once again made invisible, who continue to despise those who try to survive this era of losses and damages, which stars in the climate emergency," concludes the researcher.
