What of environmental refugees?
p. 39 · Read in the full issue
“EVERYONE talks about the weather, but no one can do anything about it”. At one time, this state ment may well have been true. But today, it is regarded as “utter nonsense”. So says the world’s scientific community, thanks to whom we now know so much about how little we know about the human impact on the global climate and environment.
One thing we do know is that if the current levels of atmospheric pollution continue, we are likely to
experience significant changes in the
earth’s temperature. We have also been warned the resulting “greenhouse effect” will contribute to increases in sea levels so that
over time much of the earth’s land area will be submerged.
As we await scientific confirmation of the date of the projected cataclysm, we might as well consider some of its catastrophic effects in our region. Among the first casualties of this cataclysm will be those hundreds of thousands of Pacific islanders inhabiting the low-lying islands, islets and atolls dotting the Pacific Ocean. It is feared the rising tides will engulf several low-lying Pacific islands, including Kiribati, Tuvalu, Marshall Islands and Niue.
Facing the extinction of their communities and perhaps even, their countries, Pacific islanders inhabiting these imperilled lands will be cast adrift on the Pacific Ocean as refugees not victims of political or economic persecution but displaced by the excesses of modern civilisation. They will be environmental refugees.
Futurology is not a subject which lawyers are generally comfortable with. But, given the future plight of the Pacific’s environmental refugees, I’d like to think we would adopt a more responsive attitude and take a more active role in formulating legal measures to avert the impending disaster and to alleviate its tragic consequences.
International lawyers have reacted much more positively to the ominous signals flashed by the climatologists by creating a new regime of international environmental law.
The major thrust of recent initiatives in global regulation is to control the casual factors. This preventive approach with its emphasis on “control and conserve” is quite sensible. It was recently endorsed in the communique issued at the Honiara Forum.
Without distracting legislators whose attention and efforts are presently directed towards controlling the root causes of the greenhouse effect, let us consider, for the moment, the situation of those Pacific islanders who will be transformed into environmental refugees. What will happen to them?
Where can they go? Who will look after them.?
Sadly we do not know the answers to these questions. There is no concrete body of interna tional law dealing with “environ mental” refugees.
When “natural” disasters have occurred in the past, their victims have been rescued and treated on an ad hoc and emergency basis, mainly under the auspices of the office of the United Nations Disaster Relief Co-ordinator (UNDRO) and other humani tarian bodies. Apart from the mandate of the UNDRO to render emergency assistance in disaster-stricken areas, there is virtually no other international instrument providing for the pro
tection of refugees fleeing “natural disasters”.
The Magna Carta of international refugee law the 1951 UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, supplemented by the 1967 Protocol - also omits persons fleeing “natural disasters. Protection is extended only to the “political” or “social refugees, i.e. those who have a “well founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion”.
While there may be compelling moral or humanitarian obligations on neighbouring countries to provide sanctuary for the Pacific’s environmental refugees, there is no specific legal obligation to do so. Left to their own devices, all that these islanders can do is build strong and durable canoes before setting sail on their uncertain journeys. Hopefully, some passing ship will come to their rescue. International law requires all ships to rescue any persons in distress at sea and to disembark them at the next port of call.
Failing rescue at sea, the voyagers can arrive on the shores of another country confident in the knowledge they won’t be turned away. Coastal states are obliged to receive a vessel in distress and to relieve that distress by enabling the vessel to become seaworthy before despatching it out to sea again.
Beyond these transitory arrangements, international law does not offer much solace to the environmental refugee.
Whether this position will change depends on the commit ment of the international community to search for durable solutions to the potential problems of environmental refugees.
Pacific nations cannot afford to take the back seat in such initiatives surely not when the very survival of their citizens is at stake!
* Julian Moti is Adjunct Professor of Law at Bond University, Queensland.