By Stephan Sonnenberg
 

We are currently witnessing another spectacle of global governance failure. Our political leaders are currently gathering in Glasgow for the latest climate change conference. A few, no doubt, understand the urgency of the situation.

Most, however, approach the occasion like a Halloween dress-up party; donning a green costume for a few days to hide the regular clothes they continue to wear underneath. Their dithering will devastate the lived environment for billions of people around the world.

Standing at the front lines of that impending disaster are hundreds of thousands of communities. When the day comes that these communities turn to ash, become covered in sand, or sink underneath the waves, the people living there will have no choice but to move elsewhere: to become climate refugees.

Along with everyone else, we watched in amazement as the world's militaries this past summer airlifted nearly 125,000 Afghans from Kabul to relative safety. That evacuation, of course, unfolded amidst untold layers of accumulated trauma, fear, humiliation, and rights abuse.

Strikingly, however, it was not these indignities that prompted this unprecedented logistical, diplomatic, and humanitarian evacuation effort. Over the past decade, many thousands of asylum seekers from Afghanistan have seen their claims rejected, some deported back to Kabul literally days before the humanitarian airlift began.

Was the international community's dramatic change of heart motivated by a sudden rediscovery of the lofty rhetoric of the 1951 Refugee Convention? Hardly.

It was rather an example of nations grudgingly taking responsibility for their collective and undeniable failure to prevent disaster in Afghanistan. It was the equivalent of a shattered vase in aisle 5 of a porcelain store: You break it, you buy it ― end of story. Korea also, of course, shouldered a share of this burden, in the form of 391 refugees that came here in late August.

What does this teach us as about the impending climate refugee crises? We must stop thinking exclusively in terms of the individual rights of those who are displaced, but also about who is to blame for those displacements in the first place. We must start to be more specific when we recite the mantra that the “global community” owes something to the world's displaced refugees.

The 1951 Refugee Convention does not address the possibility that climate change can cause forced displacement. According to its provisions, the only thing to do when confronted with a climate refugee is to send them back home.

But what if that home is broken by the “new normal”? Who is it that broke the “old normal?” Does your country's economy still depend on exporting automobiles, or fossil fuels, or other carbon-intensive goods and services? “Here's looking at you.”

Do politicians make a mockery of attempts to seriously combat climate change? Laugh now, because soon it will be you who are held to account. Do tourists who enjoy flying to distant destinations on vacation add “#accountability” to those social media updates?

If this call for a reckoning sounds provocative, politically unpalatable, and costly, then perhaps it will ignite a hot fire under the feet of those with the power today to do something before it is too late.

Bringing a few hundred Afghan refugees to Korea was hard enough ― politically, financially, and culturally. Now let us imagine what it would take to accommodate our share of the estimated 300 million climate-displaced migrants estimated to be homeless by 2050.

We can still stop this from happening. Low lying island communities in the South Pacific, the Philippines, the Caribbean and elsewhere desperately want to avoid being thrown on the trash-heap of the “developed” world's collective inaction. They do not wish to be labeled as “refugees” and they do not want to restart their lives in some faraway land.

They intend to remain in their homes and rework their communities to become more resilient, more just, and more climate adapted places in which to thrive. The rest of the world can, and must, help them achieve that goal.

Industrialized nations must rethink how they provide aid to climate affected communities. Aid cannot be extended merely as a fig leaf, or as a public relations tool deployed to promote a country's national self-interest. It must instead draw on local sources of wisdom and genuinely emphasize local capabilities.

Korea, as a relatively new player in the international aid community, can play a crucial role in rethinking tired old models of international development that insist that knowledge must flow in a one-way direction from the “developed” to the “less developed” parts of our globe.

Moreover, the world's industrialized nations must begin to take their climate commitments seriously. Long-term promises about climate neutrality are nice, but even more important is immediate and decisive action by those governments and their citizens.

The time for handwringing is over, the time for accountability is coming soon, and the time for decisive action is now. May this lesson motivate our climate negotiators in Glasgow during the remaining days of the COP26 conference.


This opinion piece was co-authored by members of the Human Dignity Clinic at Seoul National University School of Law ― Lila Martin de Fremont, Lukas Hefter, Ilya Igorevich Kornienko, Khun Kim, Konstantin Schindler, Heewon Yang, Anna Guo, and Inga Sund ― under Prof. Stephan Sonnenberg's supervision. It is additionally co-signed by several other Seoul National University professors, including:

Prof. Jorn Altman (College of Engineering)
Prof. Edo Andriesse (Department of Geography)
Prof. Nancy Cho (College of Humanities)
Prof. Bernhard Egger (Department of Computer Science and Engineering)
Prof. Kevin Kester (Department of Education)
Prof. Namhee Kim (School of Law-Public Interest and Legal Clinic Center)
Prof. Doohyun Kong (School of Law)
Prof. Jae-Hyup Lee (School of Law)
Prof. Joo-Young Lee (Human Rights Center)
Prof. Yong-Sung Park (Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering)
Prof. Annie Pedret (College of Fine Arts, Retired)
Prof. Ra Mi Seo (School of Law-Public Interest and Legal Clinic Center)
Prof. Yoon Jin Shin (School of Law)
Prof. Jiewuh Song (Department of Political Science and International Relations)
Prof. Yoo Min Won (School of Law)
Prof. Hyunah Yang (School of Law)
Prof. Joan Yoo (Department of Social Welfare)