Climate Change in Historical Perspectives: Refugees and Migration
On Monday March 20, 2023, the Albert Lepage Center for History in the Public Interest hosted a virtual webinar featuring three scholars from around the country to reflect on the relationship between climate change, refugees and migration. This discussion, the fifth of the six-part Climate Change in Historical Perspective series, was moderated by Associate Professor and Chair of the History Department Dr. Lynne Hartnett. Dr. Hartnett was joined by: Dr. Cristina Maria Garcia, a Howard A. Newman Professor of American Studies at Cornell University; Dr. Robert McLeman, a professor in the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies; and Amali Tower, founder and executive director of Climate Refugees, an NGO focused on addressing climate refugee issues. If you happened to miss or wish to revisit the conversation, check out the recording here.
For the fifth event in the Climate Change in Historical perspectives, the Albert Lepage Center held another panel discussion to investigate the ways that climate change is interwoven and affects topics of refugees and migration. Dr. Lynne Hartnett moderated the event, using her introduction to emphasize how discussions on refugees and migration are often based around acts of violence and persecution, but more and more, there is a growing number of refugees globally that are being and have been displaced by climate change. As Dr. Hartnett pointed out, these climate migrants are not recognized by the UNHCR (the UN Refugee Agency). The three experts drew on their experience and research to share their understandings of how climate change affects refugees and migration. This conception of climate refugee is both historically and contemporaneously important and the speakers of the evening created a productive dialogue to illustrate this idea.
First, Dr. María Cristina García, currently the Howard A. Newman Professor of American Studies in the History department at Cornell University, discussed US responses to climate refugees in different historical periods to provide insights into how these historical moments can inform future policy choices. Dr. García echoed Dr. Hartnett’s point on the UN’s legal failure which excludes those affected by climate change or natural disaster from definitions of refugee. Dr. García’s point is clear: migration is often multicausal and that historical and current US immigration policy fails to recognize this issue, obfuscating climate as a factor in prompting migration. “Temporary Protected Status” (TPS) as it originated from the 1990 Immigration Act, is the only way US law recognizes refugees displaced by natural disasters and therefore climate change events to stay in the US as form of protection from these natural disasters. Dr. García lays out two important examples when TPS was used to justify US protection of Central American and Caribbean nationals under this provision: the volcanic eruption in 1995 on the island of Montserrat and Hurricane Mitch that devastated Nicaragua and Honduras in 1998. Dr. García argued that the Montserratians were denied the same continually repeated protection under TPS that Hondurans and Nicaraguans have been granted, because the US foreign policy is invested in Central American political stability, and providing TPS to refugees from these climate disaster susceptible countries is within political interests. Dr. García is sure to point out that while this has worked in the past, the accelerated nature of climate change and the environmental shift we are experiencing globally necessitate another form of protection for climate refugees beyond TPS, which already has its own past of varying success in protecting climate refugees.
The second presenter, Dr. Robert McLeman, introduced his research and spoke on his conceptions of historical instances of the climate refugee and policy. As a professor in the department of Geography and Environmental studies at Wilfrid Laurier University, Dr. McLeman brought a new perspective in addressing these issues from a historical standpoint but coming from a different disciplinary approach. Dr. McLeman began his talk looking at some recent data from the IPCC reports on the global trends of displacement due to climate events and particularly who is being most adversely affected. In tracing the different ways that certain displaced persons might need to respond to different climate events, such as floods, wildfires or drought, Dr. McLeman was able to compare how historical responses to natural disasters can be evaluated, which in turn can help determine more productive and efficient forms of response for future climate related refugee events which, as Dr. García pointed out, are accelerating in both frequency and severity. After laying out historical examples of these varied responses to climate events — such as the Galveston hurricane of 1900 compared to Hurricane Maria that devastated Puerto Rico in 2017 — Dr. McLeman left the audience with a set of three uncertainties to ponder when looking at future policy regarding climate change and refugees: 1) Are we going to get our greenhouse gas emissions under control? 2) Will poor countries in the future still be poor and therefore be more affected and less resilient to this displacement inducing climate events? 3) How are the future migration policies going to address this and change?
Ms. Amali Tower, the founder and executive director of Climate Refugees — a nongovernmental organization, or NGO, dedicated to bringing attention and action to help people displaced as a result of climate change, was the final presenter for the evening. In her experience working with NGOs and governmental agencies, Ms. Tower provided a “practitioner’s approach” to understanding this climate refugee issue. Ms. Tower described the same legal omission that Dr. Hartnett and Dr. García mentioned, which leaves climate refugees out of legal status as refugees because they do not fit into the recognized categories of violence or persecution that is required. This lack of coverage under legal frameworks, the multicausal characteristic of migration motivations, and the complexity of documenting long form climate change events like drought or rising sea levels have made addressing these issues even more complicated particularly from a policy standpoint. As both speakers have emphasized, this talk is so important and so timely because we “lack global governance frameworks to adequately address forced displacement, and we lack enforceable policy frameworks to address the climate crisis.” Ms. Tower is sure to point out that 86% of displaced persons live in the global south, and despite many more-developed countries being the main contributor to climate change, the emphasis for policy in those cases is around border security and not the valid claims for migration due to climate crisis. Ms. Tower concluded her talk with a hopeful note, mentioning a recent example of a new concept from United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change that is based around the idea of loss and damages. This places liability on polluting countries that contributed events that resulted in loss and damage, which would trigger human rights law to potentially induce protection of refugees that were affected by the climate change events that are related to a polluting countries’ actions.
If the annual event series has made one thing clear it is that climate change and all its adverse effects have become even more pressing as they grow in complexity, severity, and frequency for the foreseeable future. This discussion led us through some important historical moments of climate change’s impact on migration, while also providing some practical and present understandings of how this is playing out in the world today. After tonight’s discussion, I am reminded of the ubiquitous nature of climate change and its ever-reaching effects into more and more of daily human experience. Interactions between human experience and climate is nothing new, but the thresholds of severity and frequency, along with humanity’s complicity in creating this issue beyond livable standards is entirely new. As well, the inequities between the contributing parties and those most affected is not historically novel either, and this is increasingly visible in the discussion on migration and the ways in which people locally, nationally, and globally decide to address these concerns of migration and climate. This requires rethinking conceptions of the human role on this planet and our relationship to the climate, for the sake of current and future generations of human life. Climate change will force us to reconsider and rethink many accepted conceptions of human life, which can range from the legal definition of refugee or how climate change policy might validate a nation’s status in the international community. In order for lasting change to occur to combat climate crisis, there will need to be substantial relearning and reconceiving of humanity’s relationship to the world.
