As COP26 approaches next week, nations must join long-standing advocates to act on climate-induced migration. Last month, the World Bank released its latest Groundswell report on climate and migration, projecting that 216 million people in six regions could move within their countries by 2050. While the report focuses on future internal migration, we know that millions globally are already fleeing their homes because of floods, storms, droughts, wildfires, and associated loss of livelihoods both internally and across borders. It is time that governments support climate adaptation within countries to improve critical infrastructure. It is also time, the international community focus on loss and damage finance – a vital aspect of the upcoming COP26.

Last week’s long-anticipated report from the Biden Administration, “Report on the Impact of Climate Change on Migration,” offers a valuable assessment of policy challenges and calls for greater humanitarian protections for those fleeing the climate crisis. Yet, given harsh anti-asylum policies at the border and cruel Trump-era policies like Title 42, the United States must take more significant action to improve its protections. Just last month, the administration deported thousands of Haitian migrants, who were fleeing longstanding effects of destabilization in Haiti, which the international community and the United States have played a role in, previous disasters, the 7.2 magnitude earthquake in August and political turmoil, without giving them a chance to seek asylum.  

Even knowing that migrants were approaching the US border, instead of responding with compassion and resources that could provide safe refuge to those forced to travel across borders, migrants, like those from Haiti, were met with expanded border enforcement and repression. This response is a preview of how the administration may respond to climate-related disasters that factor into why people leave their countries. Rather than focusing on climate-induced migrants as a national security threat, which continues a dangerous “us” versus “them” narrative, exacerbating existing anti-immigrant sentiments and xenophobia, climate change should be treated as a global problem. From that view, we must take action as part of the global citizenry —  thus, it’s not possible to squarely “protect” the national interests of one country.  

The US bears a disproportionate share of the responsibility to tackle the climate crisis, with an outsized role in causing it, including a debt to displaced people worldwide. Yet, despite being one of the largest greenhouse gas emitters in history, the report says the United States has no obligation to support climate-induced migrants: “The United States does not consider its international human rights obligations to require extending international protection to individuals fleeing the impacts of climate change.” No walls will stop the rising tides, catastrophic storms, or climate migrants who move internally and across borders.

The United States refugee and asylum system can protect people right now – which is critical as communities worldwide flee their homes. The report acknowledges the importance of a new legal pathway and that “policy and programming efforts made today and in coming years will impact estimates of people moving due to climate-related factors.” Rather than altering international agreements on refugees, the US aims to create laws that would allow climate change impacts to be part of a valid claim for refugee status. This interim step is important to imagine what creating new legal pathways for cross-border migration could look like.

However, the report does not offer concrete recommendations about what that pathway should be. Instead, the report leaves the task of developing specific policies to a yet to be established interagency working group. Since “climate change destabilizes entire existences, it marginalizes people who are already oppressed, and it erodes their rights, their abilities to feed themselves, to work, to withstand disasters, to survive increasing costs of living. This is a failure to not recognize all of that in your policy prescription,” as shared by Climate Refugees Founder and Executive Director Amali Tower in a recent Grist piece. Free protocol agreements of Africa, such as the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), can serve as a prototype for what an international agreement could look like. These agreements support the free movement of persons between states and already have the framework to address the protection gap for climate displaced persons by permitting entry and stay into receiving states, allowing access to territory, livelihood opportunities, and financial assistance (for more, see the Platform on Disaster Displacement’s 2018 report). This approach is an example of what it could look like to protect human security on a regional and global scale, rather than narrowly focusing on one country’s national security.

Climate finance is a justice issue. At COP26, developed high-emissions countries, who acknowledge the importance of climate finance, but fail in commitments, must compensate communities on the front line for irreparable losses and damage and help resettle displaced people. Monday’s Climate Finance Delivery Plan published by the UK government states that the developed countries’ $100 billion annual aid pledge will not be reached until 2023 — leaving a significant gap in aid for developing countries grappling with the climate crisis. 

This is a woefully low amount of funding to address both what is needed for climate adaptation and mitigation as well as what is owed from those most responsible for the world’s accelerating climate crisis. Further, there are widespread concerns about the quality of finance offered, with questions surrounding the use of loans instead of grants, which would result in increased debt for the poorest countries who are required to take out loans to recover from climate disasters. In addition, the new roadmap provided no robust commitment to increase the share of climate finance for adaptation. Adaptation measures are critical for countries that can go beyond better infrastructure and early-warning systems to incorporate transformative migration policy.

Time is running out for wealthy nations to build trust and deliver on their finance targets. We need policymakers globally to focus on rooted policy with robust enforcement mechanisms. The polluter pay principle of Loss and Damage in Article 8 of the Paris Agreement, where the polluter is responsible for costs associated with pollution, its prevention, and its control, must be front and center at COP26 (hear more on this from Amali Tower in the Doha Debates). Climate Refugees work in the Lake Chad Basin, where climate conditions and conflict play a dual role in the forced displacement of over five million people, is one of 12 case studies to be presented as loss and damage in this publication by IIED and ICCCAD, with a foreword by COP President Alok Sharma, at COP26. In Glasgow, we need to ensure that the fair share of loss and damage finance goes to the most vulnerable countries and communities that face extreme displacement and forced migration.