By Bushra Ali Khan
There are no soldiers in sight. No gunfire, airstrikes, or formal declarations of war. And yet, across many parts of the world, people are increasingly being forced from their homes by environmental conditions that make survival itself uncertain. Wells run dry after years of groundwater depletion. Agricultural land becomes infertile due to salinisation and prolonged heat. Livelihoods collapse under unpredictable rainfall, desertification, and repeated climate shocks. Families leave not because they want to, but because remaining is no longer viable.
These forms of displacement are rarely understood through the language of conflict or forced migration. Instead, they are often framed as unfortunate environmental consequences or developmental challenges. However, climate change is increasingly producing conditions that resemble forms of structural conflict: intensifying competition over land and water, destabilising livelihoods, and forcing communities into precarious forms of migration. At the same time, existing international refugee and forced migration frameworks remain poorly equipped to recognise or protect those displaced by these processes.
This article argues that climate-induced displacement exposes a growing mismatch between contemporary realities of forced migration and the legal frameworks designed to govern refugee protection. While climate mobility is often treated as temporary or voluntary, many affected communities experience forms of coercive displacement that challenge conventional distinctions between environmental crisis, conflict, and forced migration.
Climate Change as Slow Violence
Unlike conventional armed conflict, climate change rarely produces immediate and spectacular destruction. Its violence unfolds gradually through rising temperatures, prolonged droughts, coastal erosion, salinisation, crop failure, and water scarcity. This form of harm has been described as “slow violence,” a term associated with scholars like Rob Nixon who have attempted to capture the delayed, often invisible nature of environmental destruction.
Yet slow violence is no less destructive. Over time, environmental degradation destabilises the economic and social foundations upon which communities depend. Agricultural productivity declines, access to water becomes increasingly uncertain, and traditional livelihood systems become unsustainable. These pressures reshape patterns of mobility, pushing individuals and households toward migration as a survival strategy rather than a voluntary choice.
In many cases, climate change does not act as a single trigger for displacement but as a threat multiplier that intensifies existing vulnerabilities including poverty, food insecurity, weak governance, and social inequality. The result is not simply environmental stress, but the gradual erosion of the conditions necessary for stable and dignified life.
Resource Scarcity and Conflict
Across different regions, climate-related environmental pressures are increasingly contributing to tensions over access to resources. In parts of the Sahel and sub-Saharan Africa, changing rainfall patterns and advancing desertification have intensified competition between pastoralist and farming communities over grazing routes, water access, and arable land. As resources become scarcer, localised conflicts over territory and survival become more frequent.
Similar dynamics are visible in South Asia. In coastal Bangladesh and the Sundarbans region, rising sea levels, salinisation, and river erosion have rendered agricultural land increasingly unproductive, forcing many households into precarious migration toward urban centres. In India, groundwater depletion, extreme heat, and agrarian distress are reshaping patterns of rural livelihood and mobility, particularly among economically vulnerable communities dependent on agriculture.
These cases demonstrate that climate change is not only an environmental issue but also a political and social one. Scarcity alters relationships between communities, intensifies inequalities, and creates conditions in which access to land, food, and water becomes deeply contested. While these struggles may not resemble conventional warfare, they involve many of the same underlying dynamics: competition over resources, unequal access to protection, and disruption of social stability.
Forced Migration Without Legal Recognition
Displacement has long been recognised as one of the clearest consequences of conflict. Yet individuals displaced by climate-related factors often remain legally invisible within international protection systems. The 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and its 1967 Protocol were designed primarily to address persecution based on race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or membership of a particular social group. As a result, people displaced by environmental degradation, sea-level rise, drought, or climate-related livelihood collapse rarely meet the legal definition of a refugee.
This creates a significant protection gap. Many remain internally displaced within their own countries, while others migrate across borders without access to durable legal protections.
Institutions such as the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees increasingly acknowledge the relationship between climate change and displacement, yet international legal frameworks continue to treat climate mobility as secondary to conventional forms of political persecution and armed conflict. Similarly, agreements such as the Paris Agreement and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change recognise climate vulnerability but provide limited binding protections for those displaced by environmental change.
Consequently, many climate-displaced individuals exist in a legal grey zone: displaced, but not formally protected.
The Politics of Visibility and Protection
The absence of legal recognition has profound political consequences. Labels matter because they shape institutional responses, determine eligibility for protection, and influence how displacement is understood by states and international organisations.
When displacement results from armed conflict, humanitarian systems mobilise around the language of emergency, protection, and international responsibility. Climate-related displacement, however, is often framed as a developmental or humanitarian issue rather than a question of rights and protection. This framing can obscure the coercive nature of climate mobility and shift responsibility onto affected communities themselves.
Describing climate-induced displacement merely as adaptation or migration risks overlooking the structural inequalities that shape vulnerability in the first place. Those most affected by climate change are frequently communities that have contributed least to global emissions yet possess the fewest resources to adapt. In this sense, climate-induced displacement raises important questions not only about environmental change, but also about justice, responsibility, and global inequality.
Rethinking Refugee Protection in a Warming World
The growing scale of climate-related displacement suggests that existing refugee and forced migration frameworks are increasingly inadequate for contemporary realities. This does not necessarily mean that all climate-related movements should be incorporated into the existing refugee definition. However, it does require greater recognition that environmental degradation can produce forms of forced displacement comparable in severity to conflict-related migration.
Addressing this challenge will require a combination of legal, political, and institutional responses.
- First, international protection frameworks must more seriously acknowledge the coercive dimensions of climate-related displacement, particularly where environmental collapse destroys the conditions necessary for survival.
- Second, regional and national mechanisms for protecting internally displaced persons should be strengthened, especially in climate-vulnerable regions where cross-border refugee protections remain limited.
- Third, climate adaptation strategies must incorporate mobility and displacement planning rather than treating migration solely as a policy failure. In many contexts, migration will increasingly become a necessary survival strategy rather than an exceptional response.
- Finally, discussions surrounding climate displacement must move beyond narrow distinctions between “voluntary” and “forced” migration. For many communities facing environmental collapse, these categories are becoming increasingly difficult to separate.
Conclusion
Climate change is reshaping patterns of displacement, insecurity, and survival across the world. Although these processes often unfold gradually rather than explosively, their consequences are deeply disruptive. Communities are losing access to land, water, livelihoods, and stability under conditions that existing legal frameworks struggle to adequately recognise.
The challenge posed by climate-induced displacement is therefore not only environmental, but fundamentally political and legal. It forces us to confront whether contemporary refugee and forced migration systems remain capable of responding to emerging forms of insecurity in a warming world.
The realities of climate displacement are no longer hypothetical. They are already unfolding across vulnerable regions worldwide. The question is whether international protection frameworks are prepared to recognise and respond to them before these crises deepen further.
Bushra Ali Khan is a Research & Communications Officer at the South Asian Institute of Crime & Justice Studies
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