Climate Refugees is appalled at the Biden administration’s Executive Order this week that effectively denies people the right to seek asylum when an arbitrary threshold is met. Not only is this unjust, it is also illegal. At a time when global displacement is once again expected to reach record highs of over 130 million people, these cruel border policies are not only harmful, they are unhelpful.
Climate Refugees has just returned from Central America, where we spoke to migrants, returned migrants, farmers and Indigenous communities devastated by disasters and more than a decade of drought. Everywhere we went in the Dry Corridor, a singular message was heard:
““We are forced to migrate. We don’t want to leave our homes but we have to because of climate change.” ”
There is no denying that the climate crisis and the displacement crisis are connected. Over half of today’s millions of refugees and internally displaced people are living in some of the most climate vulnerable countries in the world. These are Global South countries that are experiencing displacement as loss and damage, and where migration pathways would actually offer effective means of climate adaptation for some of the most vulnerable people on the planet.
This executive order comes just as the international community is meeting in Bonn for UN climate talks, where country after country are sharing testimonies of the migration their citizens are forced to undertake, and where refugees are at further risk to climate shocks and the effects of conflict. Instead of these border theatrics, the US should be stepping up its climate action by drastically lowering its emissions, and paying its fair share of grant-based climate finance to support adaptation that ensures one’s right to stay, and loss and damage to compensate communities and countries facing crippling setbacks.
In 2021, in response to the President’s executive order on planning for the impacts of climate change on migration, Climate Refugees provided the administration with a report that urged the President to re-focus climate-related migration as the security of people and communities, rather than the security of states, and link fragmented climate action to the human rights and protection of marginalized populations. It is deeply disappointing that these recommendations have not come to fruition.
The Biden administration has once again demonstrated that border policy is its climate policy, knowing fully well that these policies will do nothing to help migrants and asylum seekers nor stem the climate crisis. Instead, the administration should look to the Climate Displaced Persons Act that Climate Refugees was proud to support and endorse last year, as yet another logical and humane example of how the administration can better support climate displaced people.
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