Cam Walker
World Refugee Day, marked on June 20, is a chance to acknowledge both the plight and the courage of refugees. It could also be a day for reflection on another looming crisis: the beginning of a new wave of refugees fleeing human-induced climate change.
At the time that PM John Howard was milking the Tampa crisis, former US president Bill Clinton commented "if you're worried about 400 people, you just let the world keep warming up like this for the next 50 years and your grandchildren will be worried about 400,000 people".
Climate change poses a threat to the habitability of many islands and nations in our region: increased periods of drought and floods will affect food and water security and infrastructure, and increased numbers of cyclones may cause some island states to become uninhabitable.
While the concept of environmental refugees is not new (the term has been in use since the late 1940s), the rise of climate refugees is an emerging phenomenon. The International Red Cross, in its World Disasters Report 2001 suggested that 25 million people (up to 58% of all refugees currently on the Earth) may already be environmental refugees.
These people are fleeing a multitude of disruptions, including global warming. But even these rather daunting numbers start to fade against what looks possible in less than a human lifetime. Oxford University academic Norman Myers suggests that there could be 150 million environmental refugees on the move within 50 years, including at least 75 million in our region. In 2004, Canadian environment minister David Anderson suggested that global warming could create up to 500 million refugees.
Thos who are displaced will do what any of us would: move and seek refuge elsewhere. And, do we, amongst the highest per-capita greenhouse gas emitters on the planet, really feel we have a right to oppose them coming here?
There seems little doubt that, in coming decades, we will experience a growing tide of humanity seeking refuge from global warming: this is already happening in the Pacific. The island nation of Tuvalu has signed an agreement with the NZ government to relocate most of its citizens in coming decades.
To raise this issue is not to conjure up alarm or panic. It is not an argument to "close the borders", nor reason to despair or bury our heads in the sand. It is to underscore what we already know: that we need to take immediate and dramatic action on global warming. This will greatly ameliorate the human costs of climate change, including the creation of climate refugees.
Therefore, we need to understand that countries like Australia, as major per-capita contributors of greenhouse pollution, bear a significant responsibility for this displacement.
In recognition of this fact, we must make room for environmental refugees, as well as changing policies that contribute to the creation of more ecologically displaced people.
Given the track record of the current Australian government on climate change, it will be up to the Australian community to ensure that the necessary actions take place: we must demand that the government cease subsidies for coal and fossil fuel intensive industries, supports renewable energy research, sets high mandatory targets for renewable energy, develops efficient integrated transport systems and stops broadscale land-clearing.
We also need to begin to scan for environmental refugees, to accept that they are real, and that they result from genuine ecological disruptions. Perhaps in the slightly longer term Australia will need to create an environmental refugee program. We should argue that this not be at the expense of other refugee intakes.
Australia should also consider how its aid program is delivered, and whether there needs to be increased funding available for communities who are impacted by global warming. As Fiu Mataese Elisara, a key environmental advocate from Samoa, has observed: "It should not be an option that we become climate refugees. As sovereign states we have a right to remain in our own lands with our own language and culture".
Australia's foreign aid program is shamefully low and should be increased to reflect an adequate proportion of our gross national income. We should also modify the way aid is delivered to ensure communities impacted by global warming can adapt to changed conditions and remain in their homelands.
If we act now as a community — and force the government to do the same — we will potentially be able to turn a disaster around before it reaches a point of crisis. This is exactly what can, and must, happen with climate refugees. We have the knowledge; the only thing lacking is will. Action now may make future world refugee days a cause for celebration, not, as it is now, a time to be embarrassed to be an Australian.
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From 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly, June 9, 2004.
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