Photo credit: Maldives.com

MALDIVES – Using hand signals and whiteboards, President Mohamed Nasheed of the Maldives held a Cabinet meeting for the first time underwater.

Nasheed’s Cabinet presented the watery stunt just months before the UN climate talks in Copenhagen in 2009.  The Maldives, a collection of islands in the Indian Ocean less than 6 feet above sea level, are perched on the front line of climate change.  They are likely to be the first country to be entirely consumed as the sea rises due to continuing carbon emissions.  President Nasheed, at the underwater press conference, was asked what would happen if the summit fails.  “We are going to die,” he replied.

As rising seas begin to consume these low-lying islands, international concerns about “climate refugees” are going to become a pressing issue.  In a testimony to the Environmental Justice Foundation about reducing carbon emissions, President Nasheed said people in his country did not want to “trade a paradise for a climate refugee camp.”

Governments of these small island nations like the Maldives often intentionally position themselves as victims to draw international media attention. The image of refugee camps, eroded homes, and underwater cabinet meetings can get media response, but new research shows that this vulnerability and how the media sensationalizes it can be hurtful and problematic too.

A 2012 study published by Carol Farbotko from the University of Wollongong, Australia, and Heather Lazrus of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado, demonstrates how these climate refugee stories capitalizes on racial and class fears, culturally ignorant stereotypes, and, ultimately, redirects the discussion away from the root of the problem – continuing emissions.  The image of the islanders as victims is a commodity which is used to provide news value and score political points.  Using climate refugees as a hook is along the same lines as using stranded polar bears on icebergs, ravaged old-growth forests, and disappearing glaciers, except here the victims can speak to us.

Stories and images in western media create what’s called the dominant narrative of how we think sea level rise will affect low-lying islands.  These narratives are important because they shape the way society identifies problems, decides who we think is to blame, and comes up with the solutions that are socially acceptable.  Dominant narratives have incredible power in society precisely because they are often invisible, they go unquestioned, and it takes a lot of effort to move beyond them. 

To deconstruct how this narrative is problematic, Farbotko and Lazrus critically examins how international media talks about the issue of so-called climate refugees.

Photos like this reinforce our perception of what climate refugees are. Photo Credit: 350.org

What’s wrong with using the term climate refugee?

The word “refugee” evokes images of suffering, helplessness, and a loss of dignity.  When asked about the term, an islander quoted in Farbotko and Lazrus’s study said “It devalues your feelings as a human being.  It makes you feel small and negative about yourself. And it doesn’t make you fully human. Who has the right to deny me the joy of feeling human?  We are born equal and we should be treated equally.”  In an interview, Professor Jane McAdams of the University of New South Wales said that the people of island nations “don’t want to be seen as refugees.  They want to be seen as active, valued participants in a new country, not recipients of aid.”

A second problem is that the term is misleading.  Countries too easily jump to change immigration policies, forgetting that with sea level rise, environmental disaster is not the only driver of migration.  Push-pull factors, like more jobs and education might attract islanders to foreign countries, or in the worst cases political instability, violent conflict, poverty, and corruption in the deteriorating country might forcefully drive them to emigrate.  When we use the term “climate refugee” to describe the future of people like President Nasheed of the Maldives, it takes focus away from the fact that even though the situation means almost certain destruction for the island, it is the response to the problem that can turn these situations into a bigger human rights disaster.

It’s true that using the term “climate refugee” is good for raising public awareness, but for the sake of human rights we need to get the terminology correct.  Although it sounds less striking, using “environmental migrants” is one better option.

What’s the problem with the dominant discourse of climate refugees?

Farbotko and Lazrus’s research shows that the ways in which we talk about climate refugees is problematic for many reasons, but one of the clearest drawbacks is that the narrative ignores islander’s history and culture.

Especially when we are talking about Polynesian islands, the narrative westerners hear ignores that islanders have traditionally been migrant seafarers and assumes that the ocean is something to be feared and fought.  But in Polynesian histories, migration itself isn’t a bad thing.  Islanders embrace migration in a way that is very distinct from the notion of “fleeing refugees.”  Groups have frequently sailed between islands, leaving some and recolonizing others throughout their history.  Mobility brings their culture together.  The ocean is an important bonding element and a bridge of connectivity between communities.  Therefore, it is not sea level rise itself that is the threat to how islanders imagine their future, but how sea level rise is framed and governed.

What should we do?

The most important thing to do now is to notice, question, and change how we talk about environmental migrants.  This means we have to respect their dignity, cultural heritage, and rights as global citizens, not as inevitable victims. Indeed, we may have to consider mobility as potentially part of the solution rather than the inherent problem.

To read Carol Farbotko and Heather Lazrus’s article, “The first climate refugees? Contesting global narratives of climate change in Tuvalu” published in Global Environmental Change in 2012, click here.