DM Monitoring
WASHINGTON: Worsening climate change requires that the United States do much more to track, ease and manage flows of refugees fleeing natural disasters, the Biden administration said Thursday in what it billed as the federal government’s first deep look at the problem.
The report recommends a range of steps: doing more to monitor for floods or other disasters likely to create climate refugees, targeting U.S. aid that can allow people to ride out droughts or storms in their own countries, and examining legal protections for refugees driven from their countries partly because of worsening climate.
It also urges creation of a task force to coordinate U.S. management of climate change and migration across government, from climate scientists to aid and security officials.
Each year, hurricanes, the failure of seasonal rains and other sudden natural disasters force an average of 21.5 million people from their homes around the world, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees says. Worsening climate from the burning of coal and gas already is intensifying a range of disasters, from wildfires overrunning towns in California, rising seas overtaking island nations and drought-aggravated conflict in some parts of the world.
Days earlier, The United Nations Biodiversity Conference (COP15) in the Chinese city of Kunming has adopted a pledge to reverse biodiversity loss by 2030 and agree a framework to protect threatened habitats.
The Kunming Declaration is not legally binding but its announcement by Chinese environment minister Huang Runqiu is seen as an important way of generating momentum for the second phase of the conference in April and May next year, where it is hoped participants will agree the framework.
“The declaration will send a powerful signal, showing the world our determination to solve the problem of biodiversity loss, and our stronger actions on the issues discussed at this high-level meeting,” Huang told the conference.
