Who takes responsibility for the climate refugees?

• Published date: 08 January 2018
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/IJCCSM-10-2016-0149
• Pages: 5-26
• Date: 08 January 2018
• Author: Bayes Ahmed
• Subject Matter: Public policy & environmental management,Environmental issues,Climate change

Who takes responsibility for the

climate refugees?

Bayes Ahmed

Institute for Risk and Disaster Reduction, Department of Earth Sciences,

University College London, London, UK and Department of Disaster Science and

Management, Faculty of Earth and Environmental Sciences,

University of Dhaka, Dhaka, Bangladesh

Abstract

Purpose –“No climate change, no climate refugees”. On the basis of this theme, this paper aims to

propose a method for undertaking the responsibility for climate refugees literally uprooted by liable

climate polluting countries. It also considers the historical past, culture, geopolitics, imposed wars,

economic oppression and fragile governance to understand the holistic scenario of vulnerability to

climate change.

Design/methodology/approach –This paper is organizedaround three distinct aspects of dealing with

extreme climatic events –vulnerability as part of making the preparedness and response process fragile

(past), climatechange as a hazard driver (present) and rehabilitating the climate refugees (future).Bangladesh

is used as an example that represents a top victim country to climaticextreme events from many countries

with similar baseline characteristics.The top 20 countries accounting for approximately 82 per cent of the

total global carbon dioxide (CO

2

) emissions are considered for model development by analysing the

parameters –per capita CO

2

emissions, ecological footprint,gross national income and human development

index.

Findings –Results suggest that under present circumstances, Australia and the USA each should take

responsibilityof 10 per cent each of the overall global share of climaterefugees, followed by Canada and Saudi

Arabia (9 per cent each),South Korea (7 per cent) and Russia, Germany and Japan (6 per cent each). As there is

no international conventionfor protecting climate refugees yet, the victims either end up in detention camps

or are refused shelter insafer places or countries. There is a dire need to address the climaterefugee crisis as

these peopleface greater political risks.

Originality/value –This paper provides a critical overview of accommodating the climate refugees

(thosewhohavenomeansforbouncing back) by the liable countries. It proposes an innovative

method by considering the status of climate pollution, resource consumption, economy and human

development rankings to address the problem by bringing humanitarian justice to the ultimate

climate refugees.

Keywords Displacement, Climate change, Migration, CO

2

, Climate justice, Climate refugee

Paper type Conceptual paper

© Bayes Ahmed. Published by Emerald Publishing Limited. This article is published under the

Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and

create derivative works of this article (for both commercial & non-commercial purposes), subject to

full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this licence may be seen at

http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode

Bayes Ahmed is a Commonwealth Scholar funded by the UK Government. The author thanks

Gillian Dacey for proofreading this manuscript, and specially thanks the two anonymous reviewers

and the editors for their constructive comments.

Responsibility

for the climate

refugees

5

Received4 October 2016

Revised17 November 2016

Accepted10 January 2017

InternationalJournal of Climate

ChangeStrategies and

Management

Vol.10 No. 1, 2018

pp. 5-26

EmeraldPublishing Limited

1756-8692

DOI 10.1108/IJCCSM-10-2016-0149

The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:

www.emeraldinsight.com/1756-8692.htm

1. Introduction

The International Federation of the Red Cross estimatesthat there are more environmental

refugees than political refugeestrying to avoid wars and conf‌licts (IFRC, 2009). The United

Nations High Commissioner for Refugees(UNHCR) conf‌irmed that around 36 million people

were displaced by natural hazard related disastersin 2009, and the number will increase to

at least 50 million by 2050 (UNHCR, 2016). The Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk

Reduction (2015-2030) (2015) stated that more than 1.5 billion people were affected by

disasters worldwide from 2005 to 2015. In addition, around 144 million people were

displaced by disasters in between 2008 and 2014, and many of them were exacerbated by

climate change with increasing frequency and intensity. Climate change and associated

incremental level of extremeclimatic disasters are now being widely accepted as a threat for

mankind (Hulme, 2016;IPCC, 2014).It is also acknowledged that communities in vulnerable

regions are already facing limits in their capacity to adapt with those incremental climatic

disasters (Dow et al.,2013). The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has

identif‌ied the emissions of carbon dioxide (CO

2

) as one of the most dominant factors for

global warming and consequently causing climate change (IPCC, 2014). In particular, CO

2

emissions from citiesare considered the single largest human contribution to climate change

(Duren and Miller, 2012). On an interestingnote, as per the World Bank database 2014, only

10 countries emit 69 per centof the world’s total of CO

2

, whereas 20 countries are responsible

for producing 82 per cent of world’s total CO

2

emissions (TableI).

Table I.

List of countries

producing most CO

2

Total carbon dioxide (CO

2

) emissions in 1,000 metric tons

Country 2011 Country 1990

China 9,019,518 USA 4,823,557

USA 5,305,570 China 2,460,744

India 2,074,345 Russian Federation 2,081,840

Russian Federation 1,808,073 Japan 1,094,288

Japan 1,187,657 Germany 929,973

Germany 729,458 India 690,577

Korea, Rep 589,426 Ukraine 641,681

Iran, Islamic Rep 586,599 United Kingdom 555,903

Indonesia 563,985 Canada 435,181

Saudi Arabia 520,278 Italy 417,550

Top 10 Country Total 22,384,909 Top 10 Country Total 14,131,294

World Total 32,407,893 World Total 20,649,856

Top 10 Contribution 69% Top 10 Contribution 68%

Canada 485,463 France 375,633

South Africa 477,242 Poland 368,398

Mexico 466,549 South Africa 319,795

United Kingdom 448,236 Mexico 314,291

Brazil 439,413 Australia 263,848

Italy 397,994 Kazakhstan 261,307

Australia 369,040 Korea, Rep 246,943

France 338,805 Spain 218,597

Turkey 320,840 Saudi Arabia 217,948

Poland 317,287 Iran, Islamic Rep 211,135

Top 20 Country Total 26,445,778 Top 20 Country Total 16,929,189

World Total 32,407,893 World Total 20,649,856

Top 20 Contribution 82% Top 20 Contribution 82%

Source: The World Bank (2014)

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