UNHCR Concerned About People Displaced By Climate Change, Issue On Table - Grandi

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 02nd July, 2021) As climate change continues to have an impact on and displace communities across the world, those most affected people are unable to cope by themselves and therefore require protection and help, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi told Sputnik, adding that the UN Refugee Agency is part of the solution.

"You have many different variations of how the climate urgency is displacing populations. People like to call these people climate refugees - I'm not so sure about that word because refugee has a specific technical meaning, but these are people that - not always but many times - need protection, need help, so we are part of that response," he said.

In many countries, the UN Refugee Agency is developing special responses to people whose displacement is linked to the climate emergency, both, in terms of policy and the type of response, he noted.

"Climate emergencies are displacing people in many ways. You have rising sea levels in low-lying island states and people have to move but you have also natural disasters that displaced a lot of people, then you have conflicts that are generated by the impact that climate has on resources, like in the Sahel region of Africa," Grandi explained.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has repeatedly issued stark warnings to world leaders about an impending crisis caused by a buildup of greenhouse gases to the highest level in 3 million years. The UN chief is calling on nations to build a coalition targeting net-zero carbon emissions by mid-century, along with immediate action to make the current decade a "decade of transformation."

"These are all things [issues dealing with reducing greenhouse emissions] that my organization does not deal with, but if you don't do these things, you will have more and more climate emergencies and this is where my organization has a role," the UNHCR commissioner said.

While in today's world there exists such a tendency as relocation due to climate change, there is a reverse trend in which refugees due to their displacement impact the environment by their activity, and that is why the UN Refugee Agency and its allies should work on providing alternative clean sources of energy for displaced people, Grandi said.

"We observe that sometimes displacement impacts the environment. So the other way around. Why? Because displacement happens in many parts of the world where the environment is very weak, very fragile," Grandi said.

He cites as an example Bangladesh, which hosts some 1 million refugees from Myanmar and the Sahel Region, which has some 3 million refugees and displaced people. In all these regions, he said refugees do a lot of woodcutting and use scarce water and other resources while trying to adjust to their new residence or settle down in a permanent one.

That is why the UN refugee agency is promoting its Clean Energy Challenge initiative among its allies and supporters.

"For example, to reforestation or alternative sources of energy. Instead of people cutting wood, you can give them other sources of energy. So, we're doing a lot of work to try and address the root causes and protection challenges, but also the impact that big movements of people have on nature, on the environment," he said.

Within its Clean Energy Challenge Initiative, the UN seeks to reach its goal to bring affordable and clean energy to all settlements with forcibly displaced people and host communities by 2030.