“Climate refugees” could be ignored in Copenhagen agreement…

The United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) has recently updated their policy paper “Climate change, natural disasters and human displacement: a UNHCR perspective”. A 14 pages document (you can read here) to encourage more research and reflection on the humanitarian and displacement challenges that climate change will generate.
The first quote from High Commissioner António Guterres is clear enough : “Although there is a growing awareness of the perils of climate change, its likely impact on human displacement and mobility has received too little attention.”

So what do we have to think when we learn that climate refugees might not even be included in the international climate agreement being developed for Copenhagen ?

Have a look at what happened during the Bonn III negotiations (the talks to get ready for the big Copenhagen negotiations). The one line of text that referred to climate refugees was bracketed, meaning it is flagged for approval, instead of being firmly included. This slight change makes the western countries (especially US + EU) less “responsible” for the problem. It could be possible we even not use the word ‘refugees’ anymore preferring the word ‘migrants’ (someone who decides to move…). Read this interesting post here.

Witnessing our negotiators playing with words, sometimes, attests even more accurately the severity of the problems they forecast…