Call for legal framework to save climate refugees

While parties were struggling to reach an agreement at the Bella Centre in central Copenhagen before the high-level segment of climate talks, environmental activists from across the globe staged demonstrations yesterday with a call for 'Climate Justice'.
The environmental activists were demanding a 350ppm limit on carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and no more than a 1.5 degree Celsius rise in global temperatures for the sake of survival of the most vulnerable countries like Bangladesh, small islanders and African nations.
Meanwhile, global civil society groups demanded a legal and institutional framework for protecting and rehabilitating 'climate refugees' who are being displaced due to climate change.
They launched an International Campaign on Climate Refugees' Rights (ICCR) on Friday afternoon at Klimaforum, the people's climate summit, in downtown Copenhagen.
The social movement groups from Asia, Africa and Latin/Central America joined hands together to demand the rights of millions of climate refugees.
The ICCR is a global independent association aiming at asserting and realising the rights and ensuring justice to the climate-induced displaced victims. Civil society groups from developing countries, including Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Indonesia, Senegal, Uganda and EL Salvador, are members of this association and its secretariat is based in Dhaka.
Launching the campaign, Ahmed Swapan Mahmud, convenor of the ICCR and also the executive director of Dhaka-based VOICE, demanded that a safeguard protocol to ensure political, social, cultural and economic rights of the climate refugees be adopted by the international community meeting under the Conference of Parties (COP-15) in Copenhagen, Denmark.
Dr Ahasan Uddin, one of the authors of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) from Bangladesh, demanded a review of the Geneva Convention 1951 on Refugee taking the climate refugees into consideration.
He also called for considering a separate international framework to ensure that the climate refugees are treated with dignity and respect.
Demanding recognition of climate debt, Lidy Nacpil of Jublee South-Asia Pacific Movement on Debt and Development (APMDD), said, "We are not asking assistance or aid, but the reparations from the industrialised countries for over-extraction and consumption of natural resources."
Demba Moussa Dembele, the chair of LDC Watch from Senegal and a member of the international committee of the campaign, said, "We don't want climate change but system change."
The need of the hour is a new type of relationship between the North and the South to combat the climate change and ensure rights and justice for the climate refugees, he said.
Shaheen Anam, executive director of Dhaka-based Manusher Jonno Foundation, said most policies in the Southern countries are anti-people.
She called for pro-people policies in order to ensure the rights and justice for climate refugees.
Rizwana Hasan, executive director of Bangladesh Environmental Lawyers' Association (BELA), said, "We don't want the causes that produce climate refugees. However, we are confronting the causes of climate change.'
She demanded steps to ensure climate justice for all and measures for a legal and institutional framework for the victims of climate change.
Ravindranath, a senior Ashoka Fellow and member of the campaign, said, "The large hydropower structures which are being pursued as clean energy by the governments and international financial institutions to mitigate the greenhouse gas emissions are displacing local communities in the South."
Presenting the climate-induced impacts on various communities in Asia, Sri Lankan environmentalist Hemantha Withanage strongly demanded that international responsibility on the climate-induced migration should be clearly manifested in articles of globally agreed long-term action plan.
Dr Avilash Roul, a climate change expert, strongly recommended that the government and international financial institutions must address climate-induced displaced people immediately to avoid the future environmental conflict.
Geza Tessenyi, president of the Intercultural Commu nication and Leadership School, suggested building broader coalition among the various groups to review the legal regimes.