We are going through the same storm in very different boats.
Like most Filipinos, Mitzi Jonelle Tan was born into the climate crisis. Her youth was marked by days spent sitting through power outages as typhoons ravaged overhead.
“I would huddle next to my mom, listening to the news on a battery-powered radio, praying that we’d be safe,” she says. “There were days when I would wake up cold and afraid in the middle of the night having to scoop out flood water from my room. This is the reality of the climate crisis, and my story is already a privileged one.”
By 2050, humanity is expected to welcome a total of one billion climate refugees, a term referring to people displaced by ecological consequences exacerbated by the climate crisis. However, as mortifying as the statistics may seem, this isn’t a new phenomenon. This is something specialists have predicted for decades. A 2018 article from the NPR reports that since 2008, an average of 24 million people have been displaced by catastrophic weather disasters annually. Climate scientists and migration experts only expect that number to rise as climate change worsens pre-existing climate conditions. With irresponsible human activity making climate disasters more frequent occurrences, more and more people will be deemed vulnerable to the effects of climate change. More and more people will likely be driven out of their home countries. More and more people are slated to become climate refugees.
In just the past 10 years, the Philippines has already braved two of the strongest and deadliest typhoons in recorded history–Haiyan and Rai. Haiyan affected 14.2 million Filipinos, displaced 4.1 million people, and resulted in more than 6,000 deaths. And while this should have been the only storm of its kind in our lifetime, 4 million people were once again displaced in the central and southern regions of the country in December 2021. This was Super Typhoon Rai, which left millions without a source of livelihood, particularly those dependent on farming and fishing. Combined with rising food prices, the typhoon significantly heightened the risk of food insecurity in the country.
The uptick in human mobility due to environmental factors has reached unprecedented levels, accumulating to a total of 8.7 million internally displaced persons (IDPs) globally in 2022. Of this, the Philippines recorded the highest number of disaster-related internal displacements in Asia Pacific, with 5.4 million IDPs in 2022 alone. As a country with 60% of its municipalities and cities living along coastlines, the Philippines is at high risk. Projections suggest that by 2050, these populations will be forced to migrate, either temporarily or permanently, adding to pre-existing pressures on potential host countries.
The climate crisis is also seen as an inequality maximizer in the Philippines, affecting marginalized communities more acutely than others. The indigenous Aeta community, for instance, relies on farming as a primary source of livelihood. This has become more seasonal and vulnerable due to typhoons, droughts, and heavy rains occurring with no downtime for communities to recover. Climate migrants, whether fleeing sudden-onset events (typhoons) or slow-onset threats (sea-level rise), face significant challenges. Simply put, surviving the storm is only the beginning of their troubles. As seen in the aftermath of Haiyan, survivors were left with no other choice but to resort to looting due to slow aid responses, which further fueled social and political tensions between displaced populations and host communities. Additionally, women in disaster stricken communities face many non-economic consequences that are often overlooked in discussions on the effects of the climate crisis. An increase in rates of sexual abuse, trafficking, and prostitution are also direct results of environmental displacement. Come 2050, this problem is expected to happen on international levels with over 1 billion people displaced by climate change.
While much of climate-induced migration is currently internal, particularly within disaster-stricken countries like the Philippines, this trend is not limited to lower-income countries, as higher-income regions are also seeing increased internal displacement due to climate events. Alexandra Bilak, director of the Internal Displacement and Monitoring Center (IDMC), notes that disaster displacement is now a global phenomenon, affecting even the global north. Europe, for instance, has witnessed a significant rise in climate-related displacements, with the number of events doubling from 43 in 2016 to 100 in 2019. Countries such as Spain, France, and Germany also experience increased internal migration as a result of extreme climate events. Climate-vulnerable countries exist all across the globe.
The Ecological Threat Register forecasts that 1.2 billion people living in vulnerable regions across Africa, South Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East will be forced to migrate by 2050. These “climate hotspots” are already struggling with resource scarcity, and climate migrants from these regions will increasingly seek refuge in areas with better prospects for survival. However, host communities in both low and high-income countries will face significant security threats—ranging from competition for resources and employment to social and political conflicts—if migration is not managed with adequate preparation and international cooperation.
As climate-related displacement continues to rise, the need for comprehensive policies that address both the root causes of migration and the security risks associated with it has never been more urgent. Joanna Apap of The European Parliamentary Research Service shares in a 2019 paper that one of the key challenges in securing protection for those displaced by climate change lies in the complexities involved in defining the term ‘climate refugee’, while also taking the pre-existing discourse surrounding the Refugee Convention and previous attempts to define ‘environmental refugees’ into account. Although the number of climate refugees continues to grow in abundance, there continues to be no international legal recognition for such a group, despite the term ‘environmental refugee’ being in use since 1970. Being unable to put a clear definition on what climate refugees are means being unable to help environmentally displaced individuals.
The EU has yet to formally recognize climate refugees, but there is historical evidence of the Union showing concern and taking solutions into consideration. However, there remains to be a clear protection gap with regard to ‘climate refugees’, who are neither clearly defined as a category nor covered by the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees (the 1951 Refugee Convention). As a solution, the United Nations migration compact calls on its members to prioritize understanding and predicting migration movements resulting from natural disasters, and to strengthen the development of planned relocation solutions and visa options for climate migrants.
Climate change will create not just some of humanity’s greatest ecological problems, it will also be a catalyst for international cooperation and innovation. The United Nations must accept the term ‘climate refugee’ in order for people displaced by environmental disasters to seek proper asylum and be eligible for refugee benefits. Migrants leave their home countries by choice—refugees are driven out. The term migrant simply wouldn’t be enough. There needs to be intergovernmental action on the subject of what to do with one billion displaced individuals. Heads of state must discuss stronger disaster management strategies and policies, as well as making improvements in city planning, with new plans centered on making living spaces more adept at surviving environmental hazards, all in accordance with COP negotiations and the conventions of the 2015 Paris Agreement. Climate change is more than just plastic in the ocean and a few trees dying, it is an inequality maximizer, and if we, as a society, cannot prevent the numerical growth of the refugee population, then the least we could do is prepare ourselves for their arrival.
From time to time, Mitzi and I meet up for coffee and talk about hope. We hope the next few years of our 20s will be kinder than the last, we hope to go on more surfing holidays, we hope to see more Filipino children in school instead of having to worry about whether or not their schools will be underwater after the next onslaught of typhoons. Like most Filipinos, hope is in our bloodline. It’s essential to our survival. But the more we talk, the more we realize how fragile our dreams actually are. We are all just one storm away from becoming climate refugees, and I don’t know how much longer our hope can carry us.
This story was produced through the “Covering Climate: Qualifying Environmental Journalists in the Philippines” project, financed by the German Embassy Manila and implemented by Deutsche Welle Akademie.