Many people do not understand why we should call the victims of Typhoon Morakot “refugees.”
The term “climate refugee” derives from the term “environmental refugee,” meaning people who are forced to leave their homes or even countries because of environmental degradation.
An example of this is the devastation of New Orleans in Louisiana in August 2005 by Hurricane Katrina. Nearly 1 million people in both urban and suburban areas were displaced from their homes.
However, the term “climate refugee” was not included in the UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, which was approved in 1951 in Geneva. As such, “environmentally displaced people” is still the term used in academic circles to distinguish this group from political or war refugees.
Some Pacific Island states have now begun relocating their populations as climate refugees to New Zealand.
The US Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act, or USAID, provides detailed regulations pertaining to post-disaster assistance for victims, including immediate temporary shelter, home repair grants, reconstruction, unemployment assistance, food supplies, legal aid for low-income families and crisis counseling and financial assistance for communities.
The act also includes regulations about relocation assistance: If disaster victims cannot return to their original residence, the government must provide assistance in relocating them.
It was this act that enabled the victims of Hurricane Katrina to be relocated across the country. Thus it is clear that although the US has yet to legally define the term “climate refugee,” it has adopted the spirit of such assistance into legislation.
Since Taiwan does not have an appropriate disaster relief law, the administration provides various assistance programs without legislative oversight and compulsory regulations.
In addition, although the administration has promised daily that it would reconstruct the disaster areas in the short term, it has not given serious consideration to returning the disaster areas to their natural state.
However, if we classified the victims of Typhoon Morakot as refugees, it would be understood that disaster victims, whose villages were wiped out by mudslides or inundated by floodwaters during the typhoon, do not necessarily have to return to their devastated homes.
Other county and city governments can then propose relocation programs for the victims of Morakot and promise to provide assistance with relocation and job training.
As such, those who are unwilling to go back to their disaster-wrecked villages will not need to look for homes in other counties on their own; rather, all other counties and cities would take the initiative to provide victims with assistance.
The recognition of the fact that Taiwan already has a population of climate refugees will not only effectively assist the victims of Morakot, it will also let the natural environment recover by itself.
It also means recognizing the threat that global climate change poses to Taiwan and our need for long-term international assistance.
This would not be a display of weakness, but an official appeal to the international community to view Taiwan as part of the global village.
Liu Chung-ming is director of the Global Change Research Center at National Taiwan University.
TRANSLATED BY TED YANG
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