Sec. 2. Findings; sense of Congress
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Congress finds the following: According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the Earth’s climate is now changing faster than at any point in history. The October 2018 report entitled Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5º C by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the November 2018 Fourth National Climate Assessment report found that a changing climate is— causing sea levels to rise; contributing to an increase in wildfires and temperature extremes in some parts of the world; and contributing to an increase in heavy precipitation in certain locations.
Forced displacement and forced migration are increasing in the context of environmental changes and climate-induced disruptions, including weather-related disasters, drought, famine, and rising sea levels. A December 2019 Oxfam International report found that climate-related events forced an estimated 20,000,000 people from their homes every year during the previous decade. The United Nations Human Rights Council has recognized that climate change poses an existential threat that has already negatively affected the fulfilment of human rights, specifically noting that— parties should, when taking action to address climate change, respect, promote and consider their respective obligations on human rights; and the adverse effects of climate change are felt most acutely by those segments of the population that are already in vulnerable situations owing to factors such as geography, poverty, gender, age, indigenous or minority status, national or social origin, birth, or other status and disability.
The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has suggested that a person who cannot be reasonably expected to return to his or her country of origin— should be considered a victim of forced displacement; and should be granted at least a temporary stay in the country where they have found refuge. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change affirms with high confidence that societal adaptations in the near term can help reduce the risks of climate change throughout the 21st century.
In 2013, Super Typhoon Haiyan made landfall in the Philippines, affecting nearly 15,000,000 people and displacing more than 4,000,000 people. Since 2017, violence in Burma’s Rakhine State has forced more than 740,000 Rohingya refugees into Bangladesh, where they remain exposed to the country’s vulnerability to the effects of extreme flooding and landslides worsened by climate change. In 2020, extreme rainfall and flooding in Northeast India’s Assam State displaced more than 3,300,000 people.
The small Pacific island Nation of Kiribati is preparing for large swaths of the country to be uninhabitable and for its people to migrate with the skill to integrate into their new host nation. More than 150,000,000 people around the world now live on land that may be below sea level or regular flood levels by the end of the century unless adaptation measures are taken. The effects of climate change also exacerbate social, economic, and political tensions within and among nations.
A 2020 CARE report, Evicted by Climate Change: Confronting the Gendered Impacts of Climate-Induced Displacement , notes that— the climate crisis exacerbates gender inequality and makes it harder to achieve gender justice; more than half of the 41,000,000 people internally displaced in 2018 were women; poor women and children are up to 14 times more likely to be killed than men by a climate-fueled disaster, such as a hurricane, typhoon, cyclone, or flood; and women who are displaced by climate change related impacts often have less access to relief resources.
In 2014, the Department of Defense Quadrennial Defense Review cited the effects of climate change as a threat multiplier that could lead to violence abroad. In 2016, a memorandum from the National Intelligence Counsel entitled Implications for U.S. National Security of Anticipated Climate Change highlighted how climate change could create or aggravate tensions between nations in already disputed regions, such as the Arctic. The 2020 Ecological Threat Register published by the Institute for Economics and Peace projects that climate-related threats will continue to cause significant displacement worldwide over the coming decades.
Nineteen countries, with a combined population of 2,100,000,000 people, are noted to be most at risk given population growth, water stress, food insecurity, droughts, floods, cyclones and rising temperature and sea levels. In February 2021, President Biden signaled his intention to raise the United States refugee resettlement goal. In January 2021, President Biden issued Executive Order 14008 on tackling the climate crisis domestically and abroad. The order affirmed climate considerations essential to United States foreign and defense policy, reaffirmed the role of the Special Envoy for Climate John Kerry, created a national climate task force, and set timelines to produce strategies and implementation plans for integrating climate considerations into foreign policy efforts.
Previous presidential administrations have not systematically and specifically acted to address climate displacement or to provide appropriate durable solutions to those who are displaced. It is the sense of Congress that the United States should— reduce its domestic greenhouse gas emissions on a scale and rate proportionate to its historical responsibility and the urgency of the threat of climate change; welcome the shared responsibility of climate change adaptation, global disaster risk reduction, resiliency building, and disaster response and recovery; assist in providing durable solutions for climate-displaced persons; aid other countries in their climate change mitigation efforts; and work with the international community— to establish a framework to share such responsibilities; and to ensure that the human rights of climate-displaced persons are acknowledged, respected, protected, and fulfilled.
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Sec. 2
Findings; sense of Congress
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