A climate refugee is a person displaced by climatically induced environmental disasters. Such disasters result from incremental and rapid ecological change, resulting in increased droughts, desertification, sea level rise, and the more frequent occurrence of extreme weather events such as hurricanes, cyclones, fires, mass flooding and tornadoes. All this is causing mass global migration and border conflicts.

The term "climate refugee" was first used as far back as the 1980s, Robin Bronen at the University of Alaska in Anchorage coined the term in an academic paper. An alternative term, "climigrant", has been used to describe people who specifically move due to changes in climate. The term "climate exile" has been used to refer to those whose states and therefore membership in political societies may be at risk specifically as a result of climate change.

This is an issue I feel very passionately about, so I'm glad it has been brought up in this forum. Although we have had people displaced due to climate change in the past, the people of the Pacific islands are in grave danger of losing their livelihoods, land and culture due to the rising sea levels. They literally have no where to go and no way to get anywhere. Those living on low-lying coral atolls are especially at risk - even if the water isn't sweeping overland [with all the devastation and degradation that can cause], the seawater is creeping from underneath into what little soil they have to maintain staple crops. While at university I spent a great deal of time preparing to study this heartbreaking situation and, alas, life events have kept me from the equatorial Pacific. Thankfully there are organizations like Cultural Survival [culturalsurvival.org] and dedicated anthropologists working to make sure these people are known about. I was in contact with a documentarian who went to Tuvalu and documented several expats return to the island - it is incredibly moving. There is little-to-no info on imdb, but it is titled 'Time&Tide', directed by Julie Bayer and Josh Salzman. I emailed Julie directly in 2007 probably and ordered by DVD copy for 35$. I highly recommend it as an introduction to modern Pacific culture and the particular threats the islanders are facing with climate change.

The worst part about it for me, on a personal level, is knowing that these islanders are willing to do whatever they can to keep the scrap of land they've built their history on and that there is so little anyone can conceivably do to help them... And I sit in my brightly [but ecofriendly] lit room.