A thin line of sand was the only thing separating the family home of Sin Seck, known as Baye to his friends, from the ocean. From his childhood in Senegal he remembers the days accompanying his father fishing or the afternoons improvising soccer games on the shore. He also remembers his grandparents, always elegant, walking towards the coast to greet the fishermen when the sun began to set.
Year after year the sea level was rising. Until one day it swallowed up his home and also took his life in the Guet N’dar neighborhood, located in the city of Saint Louis, Senegal, and with it, the dream that he had inherited from generations: to be a fisherman. Faced with the devastation, he had no choice but to leave everything behind. One night, he embarked on a boat, not knowing if he would make it to his destination, much less if he would ever set foot in his country again.
Now, his life is far from the sea. He lives in Ripollet, a city near Barcelona, in an apartment shared with four people, about 16 kilometers from the coast.
Sin considers himself a ‘climate refugee’. These are people who flee their countries of origin due to the impacts of the climate crisis, but also due to environmental damage caused by man, such as the destruction of land, overfishing or the disappearance of pastures due to industrial activity.
Although the majority of climate-related mobilities are internal movements, there are also those who cross international borders. Despite this, people like Sin remain invisible.
That is because they cannot apply for asylum or protection. And the term ‘climate refugee’ has no legal recognition. Climate causes are not covered by the Geneva Convention, which only recognizes persecution for political, religious, ethnic, nationality or armed conflict reasons.
This invisibility is aggravated because the effects of climate change are affecting the Global South much more severely. Although it has not yet reached Europe with the same intensity, as pointed out by Miguel Pajares, author of the book Climate refugees: the great challenge of the 21st century“the displacements will take longer, but they will also end up occurring in Spain.” “Slow generation processes such as desertification will end up displacing us,” he warns.
Elena Muñoz, a lawyer specialized in Asylum Law, highlights the difficulty of identifying and recognizing those who are displaced for climatic reasons. “We do not have official statistics on how many cases there are, since, in addition to the fact that the category of climate refugee does not legally exist, in many cases climate change is not the only cause of flight.” These situations are often intertwined with other factors, such as armed conflicts, the loss of their livelihoods or the overexploitation of the seas in certain fishing grounds.
A political responsibility
Ndaga Seck has the same memories as Sin of his childhood. They both grew up as fishermen in the same neighborhood. They did not know each other, but some time later they discovered that they were cousins. At the age of 14 they chose the path of fishing, entering the waters of the Atlantic. “Fishing is everything to me, it is our culture and our way of living in Guet N’dar,” says Ndaga. “Our ancestors, grandparents and parents were also fishermen; It is the heritage we have,” he adds.
While sailing in the ocean that saw him grow, Ndaga began to notice how the sea level was rising more every day, the sand band was shrinking and the water was getting dangerously close to his house.
On the narrow sandy peninsula known as Langue de Barbarie, which separates the Senegal River from the Atlantic Ocean, lies the neighborhood of Guet N’dar. Located in the city of Saint Louis, it is one of the most populated and dynamic in the region. The majority of its inhabitants belong to the Lebou ethnic group, which has been dedicated to fishing for centuries.
While men go into the water when conditions allow, women process fish and children fill the streets, sea level is rising every year, having advanced up to six meters in a few years. This “intensifies coastal erosion and threatens housing, economic activities and the stability of the area,” say researchers Loïc Brunning, Marion Fresia and Alice Sala, from the University of Neuchâtel.
Papa Sow, an expert in climate change and migration at the Nordic Africa Institute, highlights that, although the phenomenon has natural components and is clearly linked to climate change, “the rise in sea level and the modification of storms have accelerated the problem of erosion.”
Added to this are two factors directly related to human intervention, which further aggravate the current situation. Among these, Sow points out the impact of global warming, intensive construction on the Langue de Barbarie that has amplified sand drift caused by waves, and inadequate urban planning policies that aggravate the vulnerability of this fragile coastal region.
For this reason, experts like Miguel Pajares consider that talking about ‘climate refugees’ makes visible the responsibility of governments and companies in the issue. He points out that, unlike other climate changes throughout geological history, the current one is not natural: it is a consequence of human action. “Although governments are aware of this reality and have signed treaties, such as the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in 1992, emissions have not stopped increasing,” he adds.
“This failure turns climate change into a political problem, and its victims into victims of political decisions. Therefore, although the term ‘climate refugee’ does not imply legal asylum, it does serve to demand that governments assume their responsibility towards those fleeing these impacts,” he concludes.
Below sea level
Ndaga was convinced that, sooner or later, the sea would take away his house. He could no longer make a living from fishing because the ships of large multinationals had flooded the coast. Beyond climate problems, artisanal fishing, vital for the economy of West African countries, is being seriously affected by the international fishing industry. Destroying one of the main sources of employment in the region and leaving numerous families without means of subsistence.
Ndaga had to help his family, and to get ahead, in 2006 he decided to embark one night on a boat with 60 people. After a week sailing, he arrived in Gran Canaria. Five years later, in 2016, nothing remained of his house in Guet N’dar.
Currently, Ndaga lives with his wife, Fatou Amet, also far from the sea, in Artesa de Segre, a small town in Lleida, surrounded by fields and mountains, more than 100 kilometers from the coast.
In 2017, the sea level, which was already rising at an alarming rate, also took away his cousin Sin’s house. He relives it as if it were yesterday: he was sitting having tea with his friends when a call from his sister interrupted the conversation. His home had been flooded. “I ran so much that my feet went alone; I didn’t care about material things, I just wanted to save my parents, who were older, and my sister. Luckily it had just flooded,” he says.
At night they took refuge in the home of acquaintances who were staying far from the coast. “The next morning, a friend accompanied me to clean what was left of my house,” he says. Remember how the sea was still rough and, suddenly, the force of the water swept away everything. “At that moment, my family and I lost everything,” he whispers, his voice breaking. The next day, only shattered walls remained of what was once their home.
A journey without guarantees
Eight days later, at 11:00 p.m., Sin made the decision to get on a boat heading to the Canary Islands. The devastation of his neighborhood, the loss of his job because the sea had taken his canoe, and seeing his family barely survive in a camp improvised by the authorities, pushed him to embark on an uncertain journey. He didn’t know if he would ever be able to tell it, but he was clear that he wanted a better future and to help his mother, father and sister. “The sea took everything away; Leaving was my only way out,” he remembers today.
After 15 days sailing with barely water and food, a part of the fragile boat broke, forcing them to return to their starting point. They achieved it thanks to the fishermen who were traveling in it, who were able to repair the boat and return to Guet N’dar. It was not until five months later when Sin traveled to Gambia, boarded another canoe and finally managed to reach the island of La Gomera, in the Canary Islands.
Currently, people who flee their countries due to climate issues, according to consulted experts, would have an option to be included within the causes contemplated by the Geneva Convention, such as political, religious, ethnic, nationality or armed conflict persecution.
Beatriz Felipe, a researcher specialized in climate migration, adds that, as has happened with the interpretation of the Geneva Convention in cases of persecution based on gender or sexist violence, where it has not been necessary to change the original text, we could begin to apply a broader interpretation to include people affected by climate causes.
“States, little by little, could incorporate these situations without the need for formal modifications,” he concludes. That is to say, as experts point out, the legal vacuum forces climate reasons to be subsumed into already existing figures and there is room to expand their interpretation.
When Sin arrived in Spain, the reality was not what he expected. His life did not change as much as he imagined and, at times, he was forced to sleep on the street. For the moment, after more than five years in Spain, he continues without asylum, working in precarious conditions as a scrap metal dealer, while his family continues to survive poorly in Senegal.
Ndaga and his wife founded a diaspora NGO called Benno Diapante Domou Ndar to help those who come to Spain fleeing the difficult situation in the Guet N’dar neighborhood. A call to the association allowed Sin to discover that Ndaga was his cousin, a small ray of hope for a young man who, after completing a journey without guarantees, continues to face uncertainty on dry land.
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