Leaving Home is Never Easy
Reframing how we think about climate displacement
Carina Dieringer
In a place where a lack of roads makes way for thousands of caribou to roam and millions of birds to sing, 100 mph winds bulleted through village homes and 6 foot tides devoured the remnants. The typhoon that washed through Western Alaska on the weekend of Oct. 11 and 12 brought 3,000 years of primarily Yup’ik Indigenous history with it. At least 1,800 people were displaced and are now staying in shelters in the city of Anchorage.
From flooding in Somalia to typhoons and sea level rise in the Philippines, climate induced displacement is increasingly becoming a reality for many people. Alaska is warming at 2-3 times the global average rate, according to a 2021 report released by the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme. This puts the state at risk for extreme weather events and infrastructure collapse.
Online, these stories become a narrative.
“How Prepared Are You?” Photos of women and children leveling buckets atop their heads, fathers with rolled shorts and mud coated legs hoisting possessions on their backs, endless walks where heat lingers in the air, and children playing in flooded streets hang next to the phrase “1.2 Billion Climate Refugees by 2050.” In the eternal flicker of social media, these are the headlines and images that batter the small section of the internet that acknowledges climate change as a significant threat.
Dr. Heather Randell, assistant professor in global policy at the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey School of Public Affairs, said statistics and terms like the phrase cited above are not representative of the truth. The number of people displaced by climate change is hard to quantify or predict: shifting economies, widespread conflict, and lack of knowledge about future climate prevention measures all make data less conclusive.
“Climate refugee as a term is a bit of a loaded term.” Randell said. “Um, I don’t love it. It kind of conveys this mental imagery, especially in this political environment, of millions of people flooding into our country because of climate change.”
In reality, most climate displacement occurs within a country’s borders, with people migrating to neighboring cities or villages. 45.8 million people were internally displaced due to disasters in 2024, according to a report by the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center. The majority of this occurred due to storms and floods. The United States, the Philippines, and India experienced the highest numbers of displacement. Cross-border migration is expensive in both monetary and logistical terms, making it an inaccessible option to many people, Randell said. She added that most people feel connected to their homeland and do not want to leave it when given the choice.
In 2005, Hurricane Katrina ripped through Black communities in New Orleans, Louisiana. It displaced more than a million people in the Gulf Coast area, predominantly affecting New Orleans. The phrase “Katrina refugees” topped headlines spanning from the AP to MPR in the following weeks. This framing resulted in pushback from many, including the late human rights scholar Hope Lewis. She argued that calling those affected by Katrina “refugees” positioned predominantly Black communities as outsider populations rather than as American citizens. Historian and University of Minnesota assistant professor Dr. Sheer Ganor, who specializes in displacement and forced migration, used this as an example of ways in which the climate refugee label can alienate those experiencing climate displacement from the people around them.
Refugee is a legally defined term that comes with legal protections. The United Nations Head Commissioner for Refugee Protections (UNHCR) defines a refugee as a person who flees their country of origin due to a justified fear of persecution based on social identity or political opinion. This definition was updated for the first and only time to replace a previous version that excluded non-Europeans and those who were experiencing displacement later than the end of 1950. The current definition does not apply to internally displaced people or those affected by climate disaster. According to Ganor, this leaves the UNHCR historically unequipped to deal with climate-induced displacement.
“Refugee resettlement is a really specific action, and it’s often kind of a more coordinated action where governments in receiving countries will receive refugees and help with their resettlement in various places,” Randell said. “That’s not what we’ve seen with climate change at all."
Because the refugee label cannot be applied to those in climate displacement, they cannot receive international protections and aid. The UNHCR recently created a plan which seeks to address the problem of climate displacement and intends to implement it through 2030.
“Despite the problematic nature of the term climate refugee,” Randell said, “I think there are parts of the world that we’re going to need to resettle people from.”
Areas prone to sea level rise and inland flooding, like Alaska’s coast, are particularly vulnerable. Randell said that governments have not been doing enough to form a structure that can provide aid to those displaced by climate disasters.
“It’s hard, and it’s expensive, and it’s going to be more and more necessary,” she said. “...This needs to happen from the governments who have the resources to fund it and to deal with it, and we’re just not seeing enough of it yet.”
In the U.S., the opposite is occurring. The Trump administration has repeatedly rolled back climate protections such as laws preventing logging in national forests, and has taken steps to dismantle the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). This had direct consequences for villages along the Yukon–Kuskokwim Delta in Alaska.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) approved a $20 million grant in January to protect the village of Kipnuk from flooding by establishing stable infrastructure. 5 months later and 2 months after the project began, the Trump administration canceled the grant, saying it did not align with the administration’s priorities. Another 5 months later, Typhoon Halong destroyed 90% of the village’s homes.
DOGE’s federal budget cuts have decimated meteorologist staffing across the country, leaving weather data uncertain. Western Alaska in particular has been affected by these cuts. The area is experiencing a shortage of weather balloons, and fewer than necessary were deployed when the typhoon hit. It went further east than originally expected. Meteorologists told CNN that it is likely budget cuts had an effect on their ability to predict the typhoon’s path—but since no data could be collected, there is no data to tell them whether or not that is fully true.
Climate disasters are not entirely unpredictable or unpreventable. Indigenous peoples of Kipnuk and the rest of the Yukon–Kuskokwim Delta have been vocal about the effects climate change has had in the area for decades. They were largely ignored by the government.
Residents of the Kipnuk village in Alaska used to spend this time of year preparing for winter by using traditional permafrost methods to freeze seal and salmon. The frost has been thinning for years.
“Houses that are like 20 feet high would be covered in snow, and we’d be sliding from the houses and get scolded from the homeowners,” Chris Dock, a Kipnuk resident, said while recounting his childhood in an interview with the Alaska Institute for Justice. “Now, you’re lucky to see some snow.”
3 months later? Homes lie upside down, worlds float down what used to be paths, and thousands of people across multiple villages are without homes for upwards of 18 months.
Stories like this one are being repeated again and again across the world.
“We know this is happening,” Randell said, “and we’re not doing enough quickly enough.”
Climate displacement is fueled not by unknown disasters, but by the actions governments refuse to take.