New Zealand could become the first country to offer a visa to people displaced by climate change.
“There might be a new, an experimental humanitarian visa category for people from the Pacific who are displaced by rising seas stemming from climate change,” James Shaw, New Zealand’s climate change minister, told Radio New Zealand “and it is a piece of work that we intend to do in partnership with the Pacific Islands.”
Shaw’s comment follows New Zealand’s rejection of two families from Tuvalu who applied for refugee status due to the impact of climate change on their island.
The families listed rising sea levels, a high unemployment rate and lack of access to clean and sanitary drinking water as their reasons for seeking asylum.
New Zealand rejected the families based on the 1951 refuge convention, which defines a refugee as someone at risk of persecution due to their nationality, race, religion or political affiliation. The convention does not cover victims of climate change.
Tuvalu rests about six and a half feet above sea level and is considered one of the most vulnerable areas for rising sea levels. Around 10,500 people live on the small collection of islands located in the South Pacific.
New Zealand’s Green Party – who became the leading party with the recent election of Jacinda Ardern as Prime Minister – promised the new visa in the run-up to the country’s September election. They also said they would raise New Zealand’s refuge quota from 1,000 to 5,000 a year, over the next six years.
“The lives and livelihoods of many of our Pacific neighbors are already being threatened and we need to start preparing for the inevitable influx of climate refugees,” Vivien Maidaborn, New Zealand’s UNICEF director, recently wrote in an op-ed for stuff.co.nz.
On Monday, the United Nations released a report stating that atmospheric carbon dioxide increased at a record rate in 2016, reaching a level not seen for 800,000 years. This level could add 3 degrees to temperatures and trigger a 65-foot rise in sea levels.