Photo: "Climate change = more climate refugees." by Takver from Australia is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

Mehdi and his family had just minutes to flee when a lake erupted in northern Pakistan in late July due to glacial melting. He told Al Jazeera, “We had just enough time to make it to a higher elevation and save ourselves, but all our life savings, home, and livestock are all gone, wiped out in a few moments.” Their story is not an isolated tragedy. This is what climate migration looks like – uprooting millions in the Global South, who have no protection, no legal recognition and nowhere to go. They are the new stateless in the world, displaced not by prosecution but by a planet in crisis. Unless the global governance evolves, the world will face not just a humanitarian crisis but a collapse of the international order.

A Silent Crisis is Already Here

Climate change is accelerating quickly and is a reality for millions already on the move. According to the International Displacement Monitoring Centre, an average of 21.5 million people were forcibly displaced each year from 2008 to 2016 because of weather-related events like floods, wildfires, storms, and droughts. This data reached a record 45.8 million in 2024 due to the rising conflict in recent years in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Lebanon, Palestine, Sudan, and Ukraine. The Institute for Economics and Peace, an international think tank, warns this number could surge to 1.2 billion people who could be displaced by 2050 if extreme weather conditions and natural disaster trends continue. As the climate crisis intensifies, the global governance gap widens, leaving these individual lives at risk – unprotected, unrecognised and possibly creating another population of stateless people, termed as ‘climate refugees’.

Climate Refugees: Displaced People on the Move

Climate migration refers to the movement of individuals who are forced to flee their homes due to environmental changes that are caused or exacerbated by climate change, including disasters like floods and hurricanes, prolonged droughts, rising sea levels, desertification, and wildfires, which make home countries uninhabitable and force people to cross borders as climate refugees. Human migration driven by weather is not a new phenomenon, it has been disrupted because of the accelerating climate change patterns around the globe, causing disruption in global migration and movement patterns.

The concept of “climate refugee” was first articulated by UNEP expert Essam El-Hinnawi in 1985 to describe people displaced by environmental hazards as those who “had to leave their habitat, temporarily or permanently, because of a potential environmental hazard or disruption in their life-supporting ecosystems”. Yet, nearly four decades later, these people still fall outside the 1951 UN Refugee Convention, which protects refugees based on persecution and violence and not disaster-related issues. The result is a growing population without legal recognition or protection. 

The Inadequate System of Protection

The 1951 UN Refugee Convention defines refugees as people fleeing persecution based on race, religion, nationality or political opinion. It does not mention people fleeing rising seas, massive drought, or changing climate conditions. This narrow definition of refugee has been the principal failure to recognise climate refugees or migrants, as these people are compelled to displace themselves because of environmental changes, which do not fit this definition. This lack of recognition is catastrophic and strips individuals displaced by climate change of legal refugee status and restricts them from making use of the protection afforded to refugees under international law, including asylum, resettlement or legal recourse. Many human rights advocates argue that granting legal status to “climate refugees” or “climate migrants” would provide expanded protection to the displaced and signal increased responsibility for developed and wealthier nations that have been historically polluting and most responsible for greenhouse gas emissions. The delay in defining and protecting the human rights of these at-risk populations is more than technical, it is moral. The delay will only exacerbate the crisis, pushing back affected populations (farmers, fishermen, labourers, women) into a vicious cycle of extreme poverty and insecurity.

The Cascading Effect of Climate Change

Climate migration rarely occurs in isolation; it is driven by interconnected issues that trigger cascading crises. A heat wave in a country reduces water levels and also water quality. This may increase unequal access to clean drinking water for all, spread waterborne diseases, and raise the likelihood of a potential drought leading to crop failures, resulting in reduced food supplies and earnings, rippling through the communities and threatening their stability.

This cascading effect is already visible in the Global South. In Bangladesh, the rising sea levels are swallowing agricultural land in the coastal region, turning the once-fertile land into saltwater. The result is increased inequality, urban poverty, and growing tensions between communities that can spill into social unrest. In 2022, floods in Pakistan displaced over 30 million people, the majority of whom remain out of work, in extreme poverty and without stable homes. In India, the rising heatwaves and droughts have displaced people from rural areas to crowded urban markets. These pressures do not occur alone, and if left unmanaged, they can turn into a humanitarian crisis and create a threat to human security, both internal and external.

Bridging the Global Governance Gap: A Forward-Looking Path

Bridging this global governance gap requires the international community to come together and act on two fronts – reforming international law and strengthening political will to invest in climate migration and adaptation. Both face real legal and political limits, which means progress will need to be incremental and regionally driven.

1. Legal Recognition of Climate Refugees:  

Legal recognition of “climate refugees” under the UN Refugee Convention is urgent but also politically challenging. Many states resist the expansion of its scope due to fear of new obligations. At the same time, regional agreements like the Kampala Convention in Africa or Cartagena Declaration in Latin America are already defined. Similar framework could emerge in the Asia-Pacific countries where climate vulnerability is among the highest – to set new norms for the protection and resettlement of those displaced because of climate change. This would be a powerful signal to the international community and build momentum towards recognising climate displacement as a shared responsibility.

2. Recognition must be matched by resources:

Legal recognition means little without finances and political will. The “loss and damage” fund agreed at COP27 sure is a starting point, but it remains insufficient. Planned relocation, early warning systems, climate mapping, and livelihood transitions require sustained investment. Political will is of utmost importance to explicitly fund relocation and resettlement programs for the displaced populations. The political willingness of developed states to dedicate resources will help vulnerable states like Bangladesh, Louisiana, Pakistan, and others to plan migration with dignity, rather than as a reaction to sudden catastrophe. Timely climate mapping, early warning systems and time-planned relocation can help transform this humanitarian crisis into a climate adaptation, not a failure.

Conclusion

Climate change is not only about rising temperatures or sea levels. It is about people forced to flee their homes, leaving behind their lives and livelihoods. It is about who is on the move for survival and who is protected when the ground disappears beneath their feet.

When international law fails to recognise climate displacement, it reduces millions of people to invisible victims. The Global South, home to the world’s most climate-vulnerable populations, is already bearing this cost and must lead the global attention and accountability demand. 

Without urgent action, this silent climate migration crisis will erode human security and destabilise the very foundations of global governance for the world. The question is no longer whether people like Mehdi will be displaced. It is whether the world will continue to look away once they are.