Climate refugees

Story hook

Lohachara island, Sundarbans, 1996. A 10-square-kilometre island of red soil and bamboo huts, home to 6,000 people for four generations, slips below the waters of the Bay of Bengal. It is the world's first inhabited island to be lost to sea-level rise. Its residents — mostly Hindu jaladasi fishing families — disperse across the Sagar archipelago, Sealdah's railway-platform slums, and the brick-kilns of South 24 Parganas. They have no refugee status, no relocation package, no place on any census of displaced persons.

Honnavar, Karnataka, August 2024. A cloudburst in the Western Ghats triggers landslides; the Sharavathi river overflows. 2,400 families are evacuated from coastal villages. Three weeks later, the state government tells 840 families their homes "cannot be restored" — the soil itself has slipped into the sea. They join a queue for "climate-induced relocation" benefits — a category not yet defined in any Indian statute.

Tuvalu, COP-27, November 2022. Foreign Minister Simon Kofe delivers his speech standing knee-deep in seawater on what used to be dry land. "Our islands are sinking. Our culture, our home, our identity — all of it is at stake." Tuvalu becomes the first state to seek statehood-in-exile recognition at the UN, anchored in the language of climate refugees.

In 2024, Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) recorded 45.8 million internal displacements globally — 74% caused by disasters, mostly weather-related. India ranked 2nd globally after China by absolute numbers — 2.6 million people displaced in a single year. The crisis has no legal framework, no global treaty, no 1951-Convention-equivalent. This unit is about that gap.

Why this matters for UPSC

GS-III Mains has asked climate-induced migration in 2017 ("How does climate change affect migration patterns?") and 2022 ("Examine the gendered impact of climate displacement in coastal India"). GS-II has asked the IDMC framework in 2019. GS-I Geography weaves in coastal vulnerability questions every 2-3 years. Interview boards lean into it because climate justice is the single most politically charged topic at every COP.