THE FIRST CLIMATE REFUGEES

I know labels aren’t good. I experienced that firsthand in 1974. But this isn’t about labels or pity—it’s about defining and understanding a reality.

For years we’ve been hearing about climate refugees. People who lose their homes or are forced to abandon places affected by fires and floods, or areas that have become uninhabitable due to drought. We thought these were scientific theories, distant from us.

The UN estimates that over the past decade, 220 million people have been forced to leave their homes due to weather-related events. Not necessarily to go to another country—they may be refugees within their own land.

At this stage, we speak of fire victims. People whose homes have burned but who will receive assistance to rebuild them. To build new ones, starting from scratch. And if tomorrow they flood, we’ll call them flood victims. We want to think of it as a temporary situation that can be fixed.

But the truth is that you are the master of your own home. You have your garden, your orchard, your animals… You wake up in the morning and everything is in its place. The sounds of the neighbourhood, the scents of nature, familiar sights, people you coexist with. You reach out and taste the fruits of nature. And by the time the next day dawns, you have nothing. No bed to sleep in, no clothes to wear. The surrounding sights are not at all familiar, the sounds have vanished, the landscape seems otherworldly. And your survival depends on the kindness of strangers. For them to give you their old clothes to wear, food packages to feed your children. It’s kindness on their part, but for you, all of this is painful. They do it with all their heart, but you feel pitied.

“In our warming world, drought, floods, deadly heat, severe storms and other extreme weather events are creating emergencies with alarming frequency,” the UN notes. And this doesn’t only affect underdeveloped countries without structures and means of prevention or recovery. Climate refugees already exist in developed countries. And the Eastern Mediterranean is one of the high-risk areas.

The material damage caused by last week’s fire can be restored. One hundred million isn’t that much. We gave half that for a square. The issue is to grasp the reality and be able to deal with it as best we can.

And certainly the solution isn’t lynching an arsonist or an imaginary arsonist.

This article was first published on 30.07.2025

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