Collectif Argos brought the human impacts of climate change into sharp focus in 2007 when they published their book Climate Refugees.  It was the first time the term had been used in print.

Collectif Argos, a group of 10 French journalists and photographers, began researching the social impacts of our changing climate in 2004.  Guy-Pierre Chomette of the Collectif explained, “Our job is to tell stories we have heard and bear witness to what we have seen.  The science was already there when we started in 2004, but we wanted to emphasize the human dimension, especially for those most vulnerable.”

The book is in many ways attractive and accessible.  The chapters explore nine places around the world, capturing their situation in short vignettes and interviews with the people affected by climate change. Following these stories are page after page of striking photographs, bringing their position into sharp focus. We follow a family of farmers in Longbaoshan, China, forced to move to Beijing because of the steadily growing “Yellow Dragon,” the Gobi desert.  We follow citizens of the Maldives, a country of islands in the Indian Ocean just a meter above sea level, as they build an artificial island to house the shifting population.  We watch a Tuvaluan middle school teacher explain sea level rise to 12-year-olds who must leave their island homeland within their lifetime, asking “Are you scared?”

Since its publication, the public discussion about the impacts of climate change has changed drastically.  In 2007, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) had just released its Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) which used the typical language of the climate change discussion up until that time – “scenarios,” centimeters of sea level rise, degrees of warming, and other scientific indicators.  But a few books had begun to broaden the discussion.  In 2007 Al Gore had released An Inconvenient Truth, and Elizabeth Kolbert’s 2006 book Field Notes from a Catastrophe built one of the earliest cases that climate change will have disastrous impacts on human society.  Climate Refugees contributed to this reframing in three key ways:

1. Narratives, not numbers.  In contrast to the IPCC report and plentiful other scientific writing which forecasted the data for various climate change scenarios, Climate Refugees told the stories, history, and culture of people who were on the front lines of climate change.
2. Immediate effects, not future effects.  Works especially like IPCC Report and An Inconvenient Truth warned that current trends would lead to disastrous future impacts.  But Climate Refugees was telling the story of problems that people were already beginning to grapple with.
3. People, not melting glaciers.  It had been easy for writers to point to physical changes on the planet that were the result of climate change, but Climate Refugees gave the impacts a human face.

Packaging this all together under the sensational new term “climate refugee” fostered a new kind of dialogue.   Suddenly the scientific predictions were captured in human stories, turning the scientific discussion into a political and humanitarian one.

Using the term was more than just a way to score media and political points or draw reader attention with sensationalism, however.  Despite the simplicity conveyed by the title, the Collectif intended to make a very specific political statement about the restrictions of international law.  By calling the people “refugees,” the Collectif wanted to challenge the restrictive legal definition adopted by the Geneva Convention of 1951.  According to the convention, a refugee is person with a “well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion” who resides “outside the country of his nationality and is unable or…unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country.”

This legal definition distinguishes between migrants and refugees, emphasizing that refugees must be forced, by social or political drivers, to cross a national border.  Displacement within countries due to environmental drivers was not (and still is not) recognized under international law.  In fact, international law treats migrants (voluntary) and refugees (forced) in very differently even though they often travel in the same way.  Climate Refugees challenges this legal distinction.  With the slow-onset effects of climate change, both in the natural setting and in the socio-economic context, a person may straddle the line between the two.  Climate Refugees suggests that people like the farmers in Longbaoshan, forced to “voluntarily” migrate to Beijing for a better chance to find jobs beyond their dried up farmland, must be legally protected as refugees.

Even as it advances this agenda, the book’s authors recognize that the term is problematic.  In the Collectif’s chapter on post-Katrina New Orleans, they mention that the displaced people, especially in the African American communities, reject the term “refugee.”  The authors say, “It seemed clear to us that the black community’s rejection of the term ‘refugee’ stemmed from the still-open wound of segregation and the community’s categorical refusal to be considered second-rate citizens than from concerns about the relevance of the word itself.”

If the authors recognized that the term is problematic for the people who are experiencing the hardships, why do they continue to use it throughout the book? A Collectif author noted in their chapter highlighting post-Katrina New Orleans, “I regret not having the opportunity to tell [the people we interviewed] why we had continued to use a term that they found so offensive.  I also regret not having been able to explain that this was our way of challenging the restrictive definition adopted by the Geneva Convention of 1951.  Too many political leaders hide behind this convention to deny the impact of global warming on human beings and to avoid developing the international systems that will be essential for managing the large displaced populations of the future.”

While the book was revolutionary at the time, its language has become dated.  Using the images of “poor, helpless, Third-World people” to engage the emotions of people in power, mostly western white men, perpetuates preexisting, hurtful stereotypes.  While a political statement about the social impacts of climate change was essential when the Collectif began this project a decade ago, the discussion of climate refugees has since morphed into a way of speaking that reinforces the notion that refugees have little dignity.

Climate Refugees is an important landmark in the evolution of how we talk about the impacts of a changing climate, and is a worthwhile and engaging read.  It accomplished the much needed work of preserving the earliest stories of climate change impacts, supporting the work of these marginalized people, and opening up a global discussion about what to do.  But it is no longer enough to use this as the foundational text.  The discussion is evolving and there is still so much to be done.