The Environmental Justice Foundation is a UK-based NGO working internationally to protect the natural environment and human rights. They have just released a report entitled “No Place Like Home: Where Next For Climate Refugees?”. The report details the growing economic and humanitarian costs of climate change attributable for the deaths of over 300,000 people and economic losses of US$125 billion annually, reporting that an estimated 500 – 600 million people, around 10% of the planet’s human population, are at extreme risk from the adverse effects of climate change.
EJF’s ‘No Place Like Home’ campaign is dedicated to arguing the case of those displaced by climate climate change, putting the call to governments and our political leaders for a new agreement on environmental refugees, guaranteeing them rights and assistance and a fair claim to our shared world (ejfoundation.org).
The EJF also argues the need for the new international agreement to address the sheer scale and human cost of climate change, and secure fairer and more equitable long-term solutions. In the report, Professor Frank Biermann and Ingrid Boas of Vrije University in Holland, proposed five points to be included in a new convention:
- Planned and voluntary resettlement and reintegration as opposed to ad hoc emergency relief responses
- Climate refugees to be treated the same as permanent immigrants
- Any convention must be tailored to an entire group of people, including entire nations
- Support for national governments to protect their people
- Protection of climate refugees must be seen as a global problem and global responsibility
The article concludes with recomendations for ways
forward for both climate change mitigation and adaptation. According to the report, “…as a necessary first step, the international community should explicitly recognise within climate change negotiations that the right to a secure environment is a fundamental human right that must be upheld”.
