Migration of Environmental Problems: Climate Refugees

On the screens, regardless of their wishes, we encounter people who are forced to leave the people they love, the land on which they will not be afraid to fight, the garden where they earn a living or the flower they feed on the street. Sometimes we have face-to-face migrations like dead bodies washed ashore or on the back of a random truck. I’m talking about battles that take place inside the country or against the outside: Refugees.
These people are all around us as a result of the wars or genocides that have taken place in the nation; in order to create a more livable world for themselves, they have to flee, and those who are in this situation have the right, in accordance with the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to travel to another country as a refugee and to be treated as a refugee. However, the topic that this article will focus on is not refugees “fleeing” persecution or war. In this article, I will focus on individuals who have no legal rights and are not considered refugees.
Drought, famine, floods, earthquakes, forest fires, tsunamis and other natural disasters people and their ecology, economy, and even their lives, are forced to take refuge in another country to survive when you’re in danger of ecological refugees. Climate crisis refugee, climate refugee, eco-refugee, ecological refugee, environmental refugee … Climate refugees, which are expressed by many concepts but which we can unite in a common denominator, are forced to seek refuge in another region due to environmental and natural disasters. In the continuation of this situation, the lack of legal guarantees for climate refugees in the regions where they seek refuge poses major problems.

According to the International Monitoring Center for Displaced People (IDMC), more than 42 million people were forced to leave their homes in Asia and the Pacific in 2010 and 2011. But the culprit of the departure of the ecological refugees we are talking about here from their homes is not nature, but social injustice. People living in South Asia are forced to leave the regions they live in as a result of environmental disasters such as tsunamis, people living in the Maldives, sea level rise, people living in Thailand, hurricanes, and people living in Ethiopia are forced to leave the desert. Do you think that it is by chance that the places where the people we deal with as climate refugees in general live are Africa, Asia and the Pacific?

According to ADB reports; the most important factors of the natural phenomena that occur as a result of the climate crisis affect human lives and the reason for forced migration is the level of economic and social development of the country.
As a result, we understand that the regions where climate refugees are located are third-world countries that are the weak link; when we face social injustice, people will not be subjected to forced migration. There are some things that countries need to do to prevent climate refugees. For example, support for social development should be provided, justice should be invested in, and resolvable measures should be taken against possible natural disasters so that everyone can equally struggle for life on the piece of land they want.