How the Chamber is Creating Climate Refugees
Co-authored by Shen Shen and Nina Jacobs, November 30th 2021
An already vulnerable demographic, Indigenous people are suffering greatly from the climate crisis, leading many to either flee their native lands or fight to protect them.
The idea that people, and whole communities, will be forced to leave their homes because of an inhabitable environment may seem like a distant possibility. Most are not aware that, in fact, this has become a reality for people within their own country. Indigenous communities in America have experienced forced migration for generations, and climate change is making them live this trauma once more. As a result of climate change and fossil fuel expansion promoted by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Native Americans are becoming examples of our country’s first climate refugees.
What Are Climate Refugees?
A climate refugee, or migrant, can be understood as a person who has been forced to leave their home as a result of the effects of climate change on their environment. It is important to note that the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees specifies that in addition to sudden weather occurrences, “climate change is a complex cause of food and water shortages, as well as difficulties in accessing natural resources”. This highlights the fact that climate refugees suffer not only temporary hardships (i.e., flooding, heatweaves) but also long-term effects.
According to an IOM Migration and Climate Change report, climate migration is a growing crisis, with an estimated 200 million environmental migrants by 2050. The report also mentioned that as early as 1990, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change suggested that future human migration will result from the effects of climate change (e.g. shoreline erosion, coastal flooding, and agricultural disruption). As Grist columnist Eve Andrews writes, “ecosystems are changing so quickly and so unprecedentedly that many people don't recognize the places they once called home.” In other words, land is becoming uninhabitable due to the extensive influence of climate change and forcing people to leave.
With the rapid worsening of our climate in recent years, domestic climate refugees are becoming more visible in the U.S. mainstream news. Every time extreme climate disasters occur — wildfires, flooding, hurricanes — local governments require the residents in affected areas to evacuate. After the extreme weather has passed, residents may return to find their communities destroyed. These disaster victims may be temporary or even perpetual climate refugees if the areas become uninhabitable after such disasters.
However, there is no internationally-recognized definition of climate refugees. This means that, while we use the term “refugee”, these migrants do not qualify for any legal protections under international law. In 2020, the United Nations Human Rights Committee ruled that climate refugees could not be sent back to their home countries if such refugees face life-threatening and immediate threats due to climate change. Yet many countries deny that climate change falls under the label of imminent threat, which places these refugees in limbo. While most climate migration occurs within one’s home country, this lack of acknowledgment discriminates against these refugees, who are typically people-of-color from impoverished countries.
Indigenous people are bearing the brunt not only in the United States, but in other parts of the world. In the Pacific, islands are besieged by violent weather and even found to be disappearing as sea levels rise, forcing the Indigenous Pacific islanders to relocate. Even well-known tourist spots, such as the Maldives and Fiji, are estimated to disappear in water before the end of this century due to global warming. Once again, Indigenous people will suffer the most — tourists have the ability to return to their home countries, but native islanders will have lost their land, jobs, and way of life.
These are just a few of the tangible effects of environmental racism, or the disproportionate impact of environmental hazards on people-of-color.
Native American Communities Raising Awareness around Climate Refugees
Due to a rapidly worsening environment, Indigenous people are finding their land and culture deteriorating at a pace many fear is irreversible. For instance, the Native American community (Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw tribe) of the Isle De Jean Charle in southern Louisiana are the first officially recognized climate refugees in the country, having begun their relocation in 2019. The reason for such a move is environmental degradation, due to the continuing rise of sea levels and frequent hurricanes, resulting in a 98% loss of land. In addition, oil companies have negatively impacted their land since the 1970s, when newly-developed pipelines diverted water into inhabitable space. Decades later, the 2010 Deepwater Horizon spill had a devastating impact on the marine-dependent community. Chantel Comardelle, the deputy tribal chief’s daughter, emphasized the importance of the land to her native culture: “Once our island goes, the core of our tribe is lost. We’ve lost our whole culture — that is what is on the line.” Unfortunately, this community represents only a fraction of Indigenous people whose land is impacted by climate change.
In an entirely different landscape, another native community continues the fight to protect their land: the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). The U.S Chamber supports arctic drilling in the ANWR and opposes the “Arctic Cultural and Coastal Plain Protection Act.” The Gwich’in tribe — an Indigeous community native to this land — explained the environmental damage such drilling would cost. Gwich’in elder, Sarah James, has spent decades fighting for arctic protections. She argues that opening the ANWR to drilling would devastate the native caribou population, and in turn, the Indigenous communities who depend on them. Drastic changes to the environment could make the land inhospitable, and force Indigenous people off their land. When asked about the growth of the environmental movement at large, James believes climate refugees are a crisis of today, not the future: “Right now, people have to wake up. California is burning up. Two hurricanes traveling together, one after another. There are people who have been displaced all over the world because of climate change, because of oil.” To James, fighting for her tribe’s rights is also a fight for other people who are in danger of displacement due to climate change and fossil fuel expansion.
How the Chamber Has Contributed to the Destruction of Native Land
The Chamber of Commerce has a long and egregious history of advocating for the destruction of native land in order to gain oil profits. It has vocally supported pipelines that run through Indigenous lands, such as the Keystone Pipeline, the Trans-Atlantic Pipeline, and the Dakota Access Pipeline. Financial institutions which are Chamber members — including Wells Fargo, Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, TD bank, and CitiBank — financially support the Line 3 pipeline by the billions. As if that weren’t bad enough, the Chamber openly advocates for the construction of more pipelines and claims that current ones will ultimately benefit the people of these states. This is despite clear evidence illustrating how harmful these pipelines are to the land and its Indigenous population, particularly those who live a subsistence lifestyle.
Indigenous land defenders — youth, in particular — have made it clear that such pipelines will no longer be passively tolerated on native soil. The Chamber continually villainizes climate protesters who object to the destruction of land for fossil fuel expansion. The majority of these protesters are Indigenous people who live on or near the land in question. However, they are not afraid to take the fight directly to the Chamber’s doorstep. In October, hundreds of climate protesters led by Indigenous activists were arrested in Washington D.C. for requesting strong federal climate action. The Chamber of Commerce’s headquarters was targeted by protestors calling the trade association the “Chamber of Climate Chaos”. Native American activists powerfully stated their motivation for protesting: “For the land, for our waters, for our future – we must fight now so our young will thrive. You can arrest us, tear gas us, poison us but there will always be more hearts to continue the song until we are all free.” By attempting to discredit and silence these voices, the Chamber is complicit in erasing the history between Native Americans and their land.
Looking Ahead: A Rise in Climate Refugees
The environmental destruction of native land for oil profit will only serve to further isolate, disenfranchise, and harm Indigenous communities — forcing them to leave a land that is no longer inhabitable for their traditional ways of life. By dismissing the concerns of Native Americans for their ancestral lands and supporting its destruction via pipelines and drilling, the Chamber is endorsing a violent, anti-Indigenous rhetoric. Environmental racism is real, and affecting the most vulnerable populations.
The rise in climate migration within Indigenous communities will continue, but certainly not stop there. Climate migration is no longer a far-away concept, but a reality facing millions today. With the unprecedented degradation of our planet in recent years, the expected number of climate refugees may turn out to be an underestimated figure. Listening and learning from Indigenous leaders within the climate movement will help us protect the communities which are most vulnerable to our changing planet.