In the News

With Joe Biden’s recent election, he quickly signed an executive order that put in motion a 6-month investigation into climate refugees. In addition to this new policy, president Biden is also requesting that other nations and the world as a whole pay closer attention to the potential “crisis” that may unfold as a result of climate change induced displacement. This puts pressure on the international community to acknowledge climate change and climate refugees and the lack of safeguards they have. According to a source in the article, this has the potential to make nations rework and update their current refugee framework to better cope with the modern drivers of forced migration. While the scope and viability of this investigation is unclear, supporters of Biden are praising this forward-thinking policy.

As disasters increase in frequency and intensity, the effects are being felt heavily in Central America, specifically Hondura, Guatemala, and Nicaragua, leading to a rise in displacement cases in the region. The article focuses mainly on how these disasters, specifically hurricanes, are not only robbing people of their homes but more importantly their livelihood. A roughly 80% loss of agricultural land led to the displacement of 9000 Hondurans. Additionally, the warming of the Atlantic ocean is creating more powerful storms in these coastal regions, meaning this scenario will become more common in the future. The strength of the article is that it outlines and recognizes the compounding effects that led to the displacement. It states that poverty limits the ability of these refugees to rebuild their lives after disasters such as Hurricane Eta and Iota decimated Nicaragua. Additionally, the governments in the region provide very limited assistance to those displaced, essentially making migration a necessity.

This article follows a Haitian family in the attempts to flee storm-struck Haiti in order to find stability in the Bahamas. In the wake of Hurricane Dorian, a category-5 hurricane that stalled over the Bahamas, 70,000 people lost their homes, of which most lived in shantytowns. The family in this story was one of many inhabitants of these shantytowns. Obviously, these areas were damaged the most as the infrastructure was insufficient to protect from hurricane force winds. However, like many other places in the world, the Bahamian government is adopting a nationalist view regarding immigrants and refugees. This makes the situation of a climate refugee all the more precarious by forcing people into dangerous situations like makeshift housing to prevent them from establishing permanent roots in the region. According to the article this nationalist view comes from xenophobic conceptualizations of migrants and refugees. More importantly, this increase of climate driven disasters compounded with xenophobic border policies is making the plight of climate refugees more dangerous.