Climate Refugees: How The World Must Act
With 21.5 million people displaced annually, climate migration is arguably *the* human rights issue of the century. Could a legal change be the way forward?
Banaba, a small Pacific island of just six square kilometres, should be the postcard-picture of paradise. But, Colonialism. In 1945, the British Phosphate Commission — jointly owned by the British, Australian and New Zealand governments—relocated the entire population of Banaba (also known as Ocean Island and part of present-day Kiribati) to Rabi Island (Fiji), in order to mine for phosphate. By the 1980s, the BPC had exhausted the phosphate supply and mined 90% of the Banaba’s surface. When the islanders returned, those who were still alive at least — many had died on islands alien to them, and at least one man had died trying to fight the miners, according to survivor testimony — the homeland they returned to was ecologically destroyed. Mining had cut the landscape down from 80 meters above sea level to only 20–30 meters. As Banaban Katerina Teaiwa described it in 2022, “Our island is a field of bones with the flesh removed.”
According to community testimony recorded by Katja Phutaraksa Neef, the Banaban people were promised — and shown pictures of — new homes built and waiting on Rabi for…
