Written by José G. Miranda, a supervising attorney in the Climate Department at IRAP.
On December 12, 2024, in commemoration of the fortieth anniversary of the 1984 Cartagena Declaration on Refugees, twenty-three countries and one territory (British Virgin Islands) from Latin America and the Caribbean gathered in Santiago de Chile to endorse the Chile Declaration and Plan of Action. The Declaration and 10-year Plan offer a promising regional protection framework—for refugees, displaced people, stateless people, and others seeking safety—and they represent a historic advance in addressing climate displacement. The U.S. is greatly lagging behind on its protection approach compared to its neighbors in the Americas. This blog highlights the key gains from the Declaration and Plan, particularly as they relate to climate displacement. It also explores what actions practitioners and participants in climate and migrant justice movements should take to hold the U.S. government accountable for its fair share of climate injustice.
The Cartagena Declaration: A Broader Vision of Refugee Protection
The Chile Declaration builds on the Cartagena Declaration, a foundational framework for refugee protection in the Americas. Adopted by many Latin American countries in 1984, the Cartagena Declaration expands the refugee definition from the 1951 Refugee Convention by defining refugees as people “who have fled their country because their lives, safety or freedom have been threatened by…”, among others, “massive violations of human rights” or “other circumstances which have seriously disturbed the public order.” This broader definition of refugee protection offers an opportunity to address climate displacement. However, the U.S. has not adopted it.
Climate-Specific Highlights from the Chile Declaration and Plan of Action
The Chile Declaration and Plan represent a unified commitment by some governments in the Americas to address climate displacement, recognizing that “the adverse effects of climate change and disasters are aggravating the multiple causes of displacement and that they have a disproportionate…humanitarian impact in Latin America and the Caribbean.” Member states agreed to the following key commitments in Chapter 3 “Protection in Situations of Forced Displacement Due to Disasters” of their Plan:
- Meaningful inclusion and participation of displaced individuals in policies having to do with climate impacts and disasters. The member states agreed that displaced individuals should be included in both the design and implementation of climate disaster policies, so as to ensure full exercise of their rights. They specified that such inclusion entails incorporating displaced persons into policies on national disaster response systems, cross-border displacement responses, national adaptation plans, and disaster risk management and resilience plans.
- Creation and strengthening of legal protections for climate-displaced individuals. The member states agreed to promote legal mechanisms that: ensure planned, as opposed to forced, evacuations and relocation; guarantee access to medical care, basic sanitary needs, adequate shelter or housing; and, address the needs of separated families, such as where family members are deceased or missing. The Plan also promotes enabling climate-displaced individuals to access refugee status determination procedures, “observing in all cases the principle of non-refoulement on the basis of International Human Rights Law.” The Plan further advises that member states incorporate climate displacement into bilateral and subregional free movement agreements.
- Improvement of Disaster Prevention and Preparedness. The member states committed to strengthening disaster preparedness through the development of inclusive multi-hazard early warning systems, which take into account education, culture, and language to ensure effective dissemination of disaster response information. They also called for strengthening national systems for forecasting, registration, data collection, and disaggregated statistical information about populations at risk of climate displacement, including those at risk of internal displacement.
- Regional Solidarity. Finally, the member states agreed to promote regional cooperation to address climate displacement. The plan encourages collaboration among nations to pool resources, share expertise, and collectively address displacement.
U.S. Policy Lags Behind in Contrast to Regional Efforts on Climate Displacement
While countries across Latin America and the Caribbean are stepping up to confront climate displacement, the U.S. remains woefully behind its regional peers. Indeed, U.S. climate policy continues to fall short in key areas:
- No Serious Discussion Regarding Legal Protections for Climate Displaced Individuals: Unlike its neighbors, the U.S. has yet to engage in serious discussion about creating a dedicated legal pathway for climate-displaced individuals, relying instead on ad hoc mechanisms like Temporary Protected Status (TPS). While TPS offers work authorization and protection from deportation, it is not a pathway to protection status, permanent residency, or citizenship and, thus, does not offer lasting protection.
- Insufficient Climate Commitments and Lack of Accountability: The U.S., as the world’s largest historical emitter of greenhouse gases, has a unique responsibility to address climate harms, including forced displacement. However, current policies fail to reflect the U.S.’s heightened moral obligation. At COP29 in Azerbaijan, U.S. climate commitments around international climate finance were lacking. Although the Biden administration significantly increased U.S. climate finance to emerging economies, scaling it from $1.5 billion in FY21 to $9.5 billion in FY23, the U.S. and other top emitters failed to reach their 2009 collective target of $100 billion annually by 2020. Such a gap highlights a broader issue facing the climate and migration justice movements: the world’s largest emitters of greenhouse gases continually fail to take responsibility for their fair share of the global climate crisis.
- Isolationism and Securitization in U.S. Migration and Displacement Policies: While the Chile Declaration emphasizes solidarity and shared responsibility, recent U.S. policies prioritize isolationism and securitization. Under the Biden administration, recent rules imposing significant obstacles to asylum access have had grave and life-threatening consequences for people seeking safety at the U.S. border. Worse yet, the incoming Trump administration has taken openly xenophobic stances on migration and displacement issues, promising to further restrict asylum, militarize the border, increase immigration detention, and conduct mass deportations.
A Call to Action Within the U.S. Climate and Migrant Justice Movements
The Declaration and Plan are not perfect. They do not, for example, explicitly state that existing international protection frameworks must apply to climate displaced individuals, nor do they discuss reparations—for centuries of uneven industrialization, deforestation, extraction, and consumption—as a framework for achieving climate justice. Still, the Declaration and Plan demonstrate meaningful international progress. In stark contrast, the U.S. is greatly lagging behind on its protection approach compared to its neighbors in the Americas. Practitioners and participants in climate and migration justice movements have critical roles to play in laying the groundwork for U.S. accountability and action, such as:
- Pushing U.S. political leadership toward a humanitarian response to migration and displacement, generally, while continuing to protect the few legal mechanisms that currently protect climate-displaced individuals, albeit in attenuated ways (i.e. Temporary Protected Status, refugee protection, and parole).
- Pressuring the U.S. government to contribute significantly to and mobilize participation in loss and damage funding.
- Educating the public and movement participants that climate justice is migrant justice, as climate change is a major driver of forced migration.
- Calling for the U.S. to recognize its debt to the world as a leading contributor to the climate crisis through climate justice reparations, such as the equitable distribution of responsibility for relocation and resettlement between the Global North and South, and reparations for racial injustice for historically marginalized countries like Haiti, which bear disproportionate harm from climate impacts.
- Mobilizing and centering the voices and leadership of climate displaced individuals.
Conclusion
The Chile Declaration and Plan of Action offer a roadmap for addressing climate displacement with compassion, equity, and solidarity. As we reflect on this milestone, let it serve as both a beacon of hope and a call to action—a reminder that the U.S. must do its part in the global effort to confront the climate crisis and protect those displaced by its devastating impacts.
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