Climate migration new diplomatic bargaining chip: expert

PARIS: Offering visas to citizens of islands sinking into rising seas caused by climate change could be a way for countries to score diplomatic points, Francois Gemenne, a specialist in environmental geopolitics told AFP.

Gemenne, a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), was speaking after Australia announced it would offer refuge to the 11,000 residents of the Pacific island of Tuvalu.

AFP: Is Australia’s decision to offer refugee status to citizens of Tuvalu a game-changer for people displaced by climate change?

GEMENNE: Clearly it’s an important step when it comes to the legal recognition that climate change is increasingly driving migration and displacement around the world.

And what that means is that our asylum and migration policies will have to adapt to this new situation.

But there is no will today at the international level to change the definition of refugee in the Geneva Convention, nor to try to draw up a new text on the status of climate refugee in international law.

AFP: Could other regions, like Africa, use Australia’s decision to push for a change in asylum laws?

GEMENNE: More than 80 percent of the refugees protected by the Geneva Convention are taken in by countries in the global south.

What southern countries want most is money to help them mitigate (the effects of climate change) and for losses and damages it causes, and these losses and damages obviously include the cost of migration and displacement.

Island states are obviously different because they do not take in people but rather are the source of refugees.

I think what we’re likely to see is a series of bilateral accords between the countries which are most under threat and countries which could welcome the refugees, as is the case today between Australia and Tuvalu.

To cite one example, New Zealand already has a employment accords with small island states. There are already a whole series of accords up and running in the region.