The climate crisis is a racial justice issue
Climate disorder (as Haitians term climate change) and environmental degradation are already forcing the displacement of millions and trapping many others in a state of immobility. Indigenous and Afro-descendant peoples and other racialized groups are disproportionately impacted by this reality. As outlined by the former UN Special Rapporteur on racism, the global ecological crisis is a racial justice crisis: racialized groups disproportionately live in regions that have become dangerous or uninhabitable due to environmental degradation. These regions, which are primarily located in the Global South and include Indigenous ancestral lands and small island developing states in the Caribbean, can be understood as “racial sacrifice zones.” Their inhabitants often face economic marginalization and have limited resources to grapple with climate harms, despite being the most vulnerable to them. They may be dispossessed of their land, internally displaced, or forced to migrate across borders.
Yet these same racialized groups bear the least responsibility for the human activities at the root of the global ecological crisis. For centuries, industrialization and development, which relied on racialized systems of colonization and enslavement, advanced the economic growth of former colonial powers while underdeveloping former colonies and fueling their environmental degradation. This process produced greenhouse gas emissions (including carbon dioxide) that have accumulated in the atmosphere for centuries and continue to drive climate disorder today. Further, even after former colonies gained independence, they have often remained disadvantaged by an international system that benefits former colonial powers. Haiti is a clear example of this: when Haiti won independence in 1804 through a slave revolt, France demanded the repayment of a massive “debt” in exchange for recognizing Haiti’s sovereignty. This debt, which included the compensation that France demanded for its lost “property rights” over newly emancipated Haitian people, took 122 years for Haiti to repay. During this time, it has impeded both the country’s development and its capacity to respond to the ecological crisis.
Climate injustice and Haitian migration
As recently outlined in Bay Kou Bliye, Pote Mak Sonje: Climate Injustice in Haiti and the Case for Reparations (a report published by the Global Justice Clinic at NYU Law and the Promise Institute for Human Rights at UCLA Law, in collaboration with Haitian social movement organizations), the global ecological crisis is an existential threat for Haiti. Haiti is among the most climate-vulnerable countries in the world. Climate disorder is already contributing to more frequent and severe extreme weather events and rising sea levels, and climate impacts, including loss of life, destruction of crops, and flooding of homes, are exacerbated by underlying structural vulnerabilities in Haiti. Climate disorder is affecting key human rights of Haitians, including the rights to life, non-discrimination, and equality, as well as several economic, social, and cultural rights, rights related to the environment, and rights related to migration.
Over a million Haitians are internally displaced, with many others forced to flee the country in search of safety and security elsewhere in the region. This migration is fueled by political instability and violence in the country, but it is also connected to the devastating consequences of climate disorder and the state’s incapacity to respond. As outlined in Bay Kou Bliye, Pote Mak Sonje, some climate impacts, such as sea level rise, directly cause displacement, whereas others, like the destruction of crops, create a situation where people are forced to migrate to survive. This migration may further heighten people’s climate vulnerability as they are disconnected from their communities and dispossessed of their lands and livelihoods. Rural Haitians who are displaced to cities may congregate in more climate-vulnerable areas like poor neighborhoods and informal settlements, a situation compounded by economic exclusion and exploitation. Meanwhile, Haitians who migrate elsewhere in the Americas often face racism, xenophobia, and discriminatory migration governance regimes, which may also exacerbate their vulnerability to the climate harms they face. As we have recently seen in the United States and the Dominican Republic, Haitian migrants are disproportionately being targeted for deportation back to Haiti despite the dire situation in the country.
There is a gap in legal protection for “climate migrants” within international and regional migration governance regimes, as there is currently no specific international legal framework in place to deal with climate migration—the movement of people within or across national borders, temporarily or permanently, because of sudden or progressive environmental degradation caused by climate disorder. The definition of “refugee” in the UN Refugee Convention, and even the more expansive definition offered by the Cartagena Declaration, fails to adequately protect migrants who are dispossessed or displaced by the global ecological crisis, or citizens of the Global South who have been forced to flee their countries of origin due to global economic inequality.
As argued in Bay Kou Bliye, Pote Mak Sonje, Haiti’s climate vulnerability stems not just from its status as a small island developing state but is also rooted in centuries of injustice. Haiti’s legacy of colonization and enslavement, occupation by the United States, and other systems of racialized exploitation by the Global North have constructed its contemporary climate vulnerability. This economic, political, and social exploitation of Haiti has undermined the state’s development, capacity to respond and adapt to climate disorder, and ability to protect its citizens from climate impacts, further fueling displacement and migration. This has led to growing demands for reparations rooted in racial and climate injustice, with some arguing that legal pathways for climate migration may be a necessary part of such reparations.
Putting race at the center of our work
As Haiti shows us, racial equality should be at the heart of legal, policy, and academic work related to the global ecological crisis and migration in a changing climate. This recognition is necessary to address the reality of migration, but it is also crucial if we are to take a structural approach to redress the root causes of displacement. The communities most impacted by climate harms, who offer indispensable insights, should be playing a central role in defining what climate and racial justice entail and how international and regional migration governance regimes can better respond to our climate reality. In Bay Kou Bliye, Pote Mak Sonje, we strove to take such an approach. Given the urgency of the global ecological crisis and its disproportionate impacts on racialized groups, there is much more work to be done.