Photo Credit: Naomi Grusby
By 2050, forecasts indicate the number of climate migrants could reach 1.2 billion—over four times the current estimate of all international migrants worldwide.
As nations grapple with this growing crisis, international policy in destination countries is becoming increasingly reactive, focused on strengthening and externalizing border security. The European Union’s newly adopted Pact on Migration and Asylum, enacted in April of this year, emphasizes bolstered border screening and processing procedures, along with extended periods of detention, ostensibly aimed at managing migratory pressures more effectively. The initiative has raised serious concerns about human rights violations, including restricted access to legal advice and expedited deportation procedures that may overlook or dismiss legitimate claims of persecution, contravening both EU and international law. Similar criticisms have been leveled against Australia’s attempt at outsourcing migration management, dubbed the “Pacific Solution.” This policy mandates the offshore processing and mandatory detention of boat arrivals in facilities on Papua New Guinea (Manus Island) and Nauru, intended to prevent maritime asylum seekers from ever reaching Australian shores.
In the United States, Asylum Cooperative Agreements (ACAs) with several Central American countries, including Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador, require asylum seekers to seek protection in these countries before applying for asylum in the U.S. Intended to reduce asylum claims at the southern border, these agreements force asylum seekers to first seek refuge in nations that lack the necessary resources and infrastructure to provide adequate support, effectively shutting down their claims from the outset. These methods all enable overwhelmed destination countries to shirk responsibility by pushing it onto transit countries ill-equipped to manage the influx, failing to address the root causes of displacement and proving highly ineffective in decreasing migration flows.
While these developments are discouraging for all asylum seekers, climate refugees face an additional set of unique obstacles when substantiating their asylum claims, not least among them being their lack of recognition under international refugee law. Although regional agreements like Africa’s OAU Convention and Latin America’s Cartagena Declaration have made strides in proactively broadening the definition of refugee status, they do not explicitly address those displaced by environmental factors and have varying degrees of enforceability. Other efforts to assist climate refugees have focused on short-term humanitarian aid. Transit and destination countries occasionally offer Temporary Protected Status (TPS) or humanitarian visas to a limited number of individuals fleeing severe environmental crises. For instance, New Zealand proposed an “experimental humanitarian visa” in 2017 for individuals displaced from Pacific Island nations due to climate change, but this initiative, intended to provide 100 visas annually, was never implemented. Similarly, in 2022, Argentina introduced an expanded emergency humanitarian visa program for individuals affected by “sudden-onset socio-natural disasters” in neighboring countries. This program offers temporary visas for up to three years, with a “potential” path to permanent residency. Although such measures provide temporary relief rather than long-term solutions, they do represent a step forward.
With climate change set to become the leading driver of both internal and international migration in the near future, there is a clear need for a paradigm shift in the international approach to climate migration. Proactively developing sustainable legal pathways for asylum and migration must be at the forefront of future policy discussions.
Naomi Grusby is an undergraduate International Relations student at Boston University with interests in human rights, immigration, and human and feminist security studies.
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