Abstract
With global action being outpaced by climate change impacts, communities in climate-vulnerable countries are at increased risk of incurring climate-induced losses and damages. In the last few years, disasters from extreme weather events such as typhoons have increased and have breached records, with typhoon Haiyan being the strongest ever typhoon to make landfall. Such an event solicited global compassion and altruism where Canada and the USA, apart from doling out traditional humanitarian aid, also offered immigration relief opportunities to typhoon Haiyan victims who have familial connections to their residents. Drawing from these immigration relief interventions, this paper uses a sociopolitical approach in proposing a climate humanitarian visa that would be offered to climate change victims on the basis of transnational family networks and skilled labor. Noting that several countries such as in Europe have demographic deficits and labor shortages, such a scheme would benefit both climate change victims and receiving countries. To counter the risk of selective compassion against economically trapped populations, potential receiving countries could provide skills upgrading geared toward addressing their labor shortages through their existing development programs. While migration is only one strategy in a spectrum of responses to climate change impacts, a climate humanitarian visa could provide climate change victims a legal choice for mobility while invoking altruism, hospitality, and compassion from potential receiving countries, whether or not they historically cause climate change.
Highlights
In the last few years, the frequency and intensity of disasters from extreme weather events have been increasing
Conference of Parties (COP) 21 was a turning point for the Warsaw International Mechanism (WIM), especially on displacement issues, as the COP requested the WIM to establish a task force to “develop recommendations for integrated approaches to avert, minimize and address displacement related to the adverse impacts of climate change” (UNFCCC 2015)
The UNFCCC established a Task Force on Displacement, which develops recommendations for integrated approaches to avert, minimize, and address displacement related to the adverse impacts of climate change
Summary
In the last few years, the frequency and intensity of disasters from extreme weather events have been increasing. The less developed countries are more affected by extreme events compared to developed countries, and some countries like Haiti, the Philippines, and Pakistan are even repeatedly affected by such catastrophes (Kreft et al 2015; Eckstein et al 2018) In this case where sudden-onset events become commonplace, adaptation must be reactive (i.e., an immediate response) but proactive (i.e., long-term planned response) as well (Biagini et al 2014). Inspired by the USA and Canada immigration relief measures for typhoon Haiyan victims in the Philippines, this paper uses a sociopolitical approach in constructing an international humanitarian migration model, which could be captured as a “climate visa” for those who were affected and have survived extreme weather events. In order to construct this migration model, a stocktaking of recent multilateral initiatives and mandates involving migration and climate change was conducted, and landmark immigration relief measures such as those of the USA and Canada were reviewed through a sociological lens.
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