Climate refugees and a planet on the brink

According to the International Organization for Migration, “environmental migrants are persons or groups of persons who, predominantly for reasons of sudden or progressive change in the environment that adversely affects their lives or living conditions, are obliged to leave their habitual homes, or choose to do so, either temporarily or permanently, and who move either within their country or abroad.”

The vast majority of these people relocate to other areas within their own country, making international recognition harder since no borders with other States are crossed. Furthermore, it is still difficult to properly identify these forms of forced migration because distinguishing environmental migrants from economic migrants and political refugees remains complex.

International law does not use the word “refugee” for them, as the 1951 Convention only protects those fleeing wars or targeted personal attacks. However, in 2020, the UN Human Rights Committee declared that countries cannot deport individuals facing conditions induced by climate change.

Although terms such as “environmental emigrant,” “environmentally forced emigration,” “environmentally motivated emigration,” “climate refugee,” “climate change refugee,” “climate-displaced person,” “disaster refugee,” “environmental displaced person,” “eco-refugee,” and “ecologically displaced person” have emerged, three subtypes are commonly recognized. Environmental emergency migrants are those who flee temporarily due to an environmental disaster or sudden environmental events such as a hurricane, tsunami, earthquake, volcanic eruption, etc. Environmentally forced migrants or forced migrants are those who must leave due to the degradation of environmental conditions caused by deforestation, shoreline erosion, etc. Finally, there are environmentally induced economic migrants: people who choose to leave their homes to avoid potential future hardship—for instance, someone who leaves due to declining crop yields caused by desertification.

In the 1990s, the number of environmental refugees was estimated at around 25 million. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and Myers & Kent estimate that there will be 250 million refugees by the year 2050, primarily due to the effects of coastal flooding, shoreline erosion, and agricultural disruptions (representing over 2% of the projected global population for that year, around 10 billion people).

One projection regarding the number of future refugees estimates 30 million in China alone, another 30 million in India, 15 million in Bangladesh, 14 million in Egypt, 10 million in other delta and coastal regions, one million in island states, and 50 million displaced from the agricultural sector. In 2026, the figure for environmental refugees has risen, approaching 216 million people displaced within their own countries. In the last year alone, weather-related disasters have caused between 46 and 50 million new displacements.

Global warming: myth or reality

In recent decades, a rise of approximately 0.6 °C in global temperature has been observed. The increase in greenhouse gas production is the cause of this global rise. Climate changes directly affect Earth’s biodiversity, impacting organisms indirectly—such as through altered temperature and precipitation patterns—and directly through changes in circadian rhythms, the biological clock linked to organism physiology and behavior, triggering a cascade effect. No one doubts the existence of climate change, but there is no consensus on whether it is part of a natural cycle or driven by human activity.

There is a connection between El Niño, La Niña, and sea level rise: the former phenomenon lasts between nine and twelve months (potentially extending up to 18 months), whereas La Niña tends to be more prolonged, lasting anywhere from nine months to three years. Both are part of a climate cycle and recur periodically every two to seven years. El Niño temporarily accelerates sea level rise due to heat and increased rainfall over land masses, while La Niña tends to temporarily slow or pause it.

El Niño warms the surface waters of the Pacific Ocean: warm water expands and occupies more volume, raising sea levels, driving heavy rainfall on land, and temporarily shifting vast masses of water from the ocean to the continents. Conversely, La Niña cools eastern Pacific waters and leads to water retention on land. During this phase, heavier rainfall falls over terrestrial basins and accumulates as soil moisture or rain, temporarily removing volume from the oceans and producing sea level increases that are much lower or well below the long-term expected average.

Furthermore, a multitude of natural disasters occur—such as desertification, water scarcity, the salinization of irrigated land, and biodiversity loss—all of which cause widespread famines. Mass human displacements are also triggered by typhoons, torrential rains, floods, and mudslides, not to mention wildfires, volcanic activity, and earthquakes.

The planet as we know it is changing, and maps from the 20th century and earlier no longer match 2026 coordinates due to disappearing islands, shrinking coastlines, and the drying up of lakes and inland seas. The latter are vanishing at an accelerated rate due to the massive diversion of rivers for agriculture and increased evaporation from climate change. An emblematic example is the Aral Sea in Central Asia, which lost over 90% of its original surface area following the diversion of its tributary rivers (the Amu Darya and Syr Darya) during the Soviet era for cotton cultivation. Today, it is a sandy desert.

But it is not the only body of water losing capacity: the world’s largest inland body of water, the Caspian Sea, is undergoing a continuous retreat of tens of meters due to reduced inflow from the Volga River and rising temperatures. Lake Urmia in Iran and Lake Poopó in Bolivia face extreme flow reductions caused by aquifer depletion and prolonged droughts.

However, the main causes should not be blamed on Nature, but on human activity through the excessive extraction of water from rivers feeding these endorheic (landlocked) basins for intensive crop irrigation. Lake Victoria, which borders Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania, is dying due to massive dumping of plastics, agricultural fertilizers, and direct urban sewage, creating dead zones.

Coupled with higher temperatures, this accelerates evaporation, reduces the rainfall needed to replenish water levels, and brings severe environmental and social consequences—such as ecosystem loss and the accompanying destruction of native aquatic flora and fauna, alongside the disappearance of migratory birds and mammals. The dried-up lakebeds accumulate salt, pesticides, and fertilizers, which are swept up by toxic dust storms that harm human health and agricultural soil.

Yet, as dire as the drying of inland seas and lakes is, sea level rise is even worse. Fernando Novo, a consultant in water resource management and the environment, estimates that “by 2050, sea levels will have risen half a meter, causing the flood-driven displacement of over 860 million people who currently live primarily in one of the 570 coastal megacities.”

The ‘water wars’

Beyond the disasters stemming from racial and religious conflicts, one of the deadliest issues involves wars triggered or exacerbated by scarcity, control, and unequal access to water resources. Recent UN reports warn of a global water bankruptcy caused by climate change, overexploitation, and population growth. Water can be—and indeed is—used as a weapon: in current conflict zones, water infrastructure (such as desalination plants, dams, or supply networks) is targeted militarily, used as leverage for political pressure, or controlled as a means of survival.

More than 60% of water-related conflicts and attacks occur within national borders, driven by local inequality and mismanagement. The main geopolitical flashpoints are located in the Middle East, the region with the highest recorded number of violent incidents, notably featuring the historical control of water in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and tensions in the Tigris and Euphrates basins between Turkey, Syria, and Iraq.

The Nile Basin represents another focal point of tension: disputes among Ethiopia, Egypt, and Sudan over megaprojects like the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam cause ongoing instability in North Africa. In South Asia, disagreements over the control of shared rivers, such as friction around the Indus between India and Pakistan, raise the region’s strategic risk. However, Fernando Novo remains optimistic “if countries cooperatively manage transboundary water resources, as Algeria is doing in agreement with Tunisia and Libya.”

In some cases, climate change can lead to conflicts arising between countries producing large numbers of refugees—due to flooding or other extreme conditions—and neighboring countries that refuse to accept them. The border between India and Bangladesh is increasingly defined by the border wall India is constructing, and studies already suggest the potential for violent conflicts stemming from people fleeing areas devastated by the loss of arable land.

Overfarming, accompanied by deforestation and widespread water pollution from discharge in Africa, Asia, and the Americas, represents one of the greatest ecological disasters of the 21st century. The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) warns that over 300 million people face life-threatening risks from waterborne pathogens across these three continents, where up to 80% of urban and industrial wastewater is discharged without any prior treatment.

Uncontrolled dumping of wastewater and toxic substances destroys river ecosystems, depletes aquatic oxygen, and wipes out flora and fauna throughout river basins. Industry discharges heavy chemicals, metals, and toxic waste without adequate treatment, while urban wastewater introduces excess organic matter, detergents, and fecal bacteria that overwhelm rivers’ natural self-purification capacity. Intensive agricultural practices must also be considered, as they leach fertilizers, nitrates, and pesticides responsible for eutrophication (algal blooms that deplete oxygen). Environmental destruction causes critical oxygen loss (anoxia), leaving one out of every seven kilometers of river across these three continents completely devoid of oxygen due to organic overload, decimating freshwater fisheries.

The discharge of saline water from mining and inefficient irrigation systems permanently destroys the productive capacity of agricultural land. Moreover, pharmaceutical pollution causes rivers in developing countries to contain extremely high concentrations of drug residues, hormones, and microplastics that render wildlife sterile and give rise to hyper-resistant superbugs.

In Africa, population growth without sanitation infrastructure and the exploitation of natural resources are suffocating ecosystems. Decades of oil spills by extractive multinationals have destroyed hectares of mangroves and wetlands, poisoning the water and land that millions of communities rely on in the Niger Delta in Nigeria. The Nile receives millions of tons of industrial chemical waste, organic refuse, and agricultural runoff annually, disrupting biodiversity and leading to the extinction of dozens of edible fish species. The situation along the Kafue River in Zambia is horrifying: an industrial mining collapse released tons of waste containing arsenic, cyanide, mercury, and lead, destroying aquatic life in hours and ravaging crops.

In Central and South America, illegal mining, agrochemicals, and waste have caused approximately 25% of river stretches to suffer severe contamination from pathogens and industrial chemicals. Illegal gold mining in the Amazon basin dumps tons of mercury directly into rivers, polluting the food chain of fish and Indigenous communities, who suffer severe neurological damage.

The Río Grande / Río Bravo (in Mexico and the US) is increasingly affected by drought, heavy agricultural diversion, and constant toxic discharge from border manufacturing plants. The Río de la Plata, between Argentina and Uruguay, carries a heavy load of pesticide-ridden agricultural runoff alongside massive amounts of untreated urban and industrial waste. The situation is hardly better in the Darién Gap between Panama and Colombia: the migration crisis has caused a collapse in the rivers of this protected ecosystem, now choked with tons of plastics, human waste, and biological debris.

For its part, Asia holds the highest concentration of biologically and chemically “dead” rivers on the planet due to rapid industrialization. The Citarum River in Indonesia holds the dubious honor of being considered one of the most polluted in the world, receiving over 20,000 tons of waste and chemical effluents daily from thousands of textile factories. The sacred Ganges features fecal coliform levels exceeding safe limits by more than 100 times, overwhelmed by domestic, industrial, and ritual waste.

The situation of the Yangtze River in China is barely any better: it receives nearly 42% of all contaminated wastewater in that vast country, including heavy metals and agricultural pesticides, washing massive amounts of nitrogen into the ocean. The Salween River in Southeast Asia is completely saturated with sulfur, copper, zinc, cadmium, and mercury due to heavy mining and industrial activity.

According to Fernando Novo, “there are five areas in the world that could practically be considered new ‘countries’ due to their size. However, this is not the emergence of new land caused by tectonic shocks beneath the seabed, but rather the work of human hands: they are gigantic islands spanning hundreds of kilometers, made of billions of plastic waste items. Two are in the Atlantic Ocean, two in the Indian Ocean, and one in the Pacific. They act as a sort of artificial Sargasso Sea, swirling around themselves in a macabre, endless dance.” Novo is far from optimistic about the ocean’s future, estimating that “by 2100, there will be more plastic in the sea than fish.”

Another severe human and environmental crisis has been caused by mass fishing carried out by massive factory trawlers operating in international waters, ruining the livelihoods of local coastal fishers, particularly in the Gulf of Guinea and the Indian Ocean. While not an excuse, men from coastal villages have swapped their traditional artisanal fishing practices for the far more lucrative business of piracy and hijacking the very large vessels that wiped out their traditional means of survival.

Environmental racism

The term environmental racism is used to refer to environmental injustice and describes unequal ecological relations between industrialized nations and the Global South. It applies to how ethnic minorities face disproportionate exposure to pollutants or are denied access to Nature, such as clean air, drinking water, and other ecological benefits.

So-called eco-imperialism, eco-colonialism, or environmental imperialism refers to what is perceived as a Western strategy to influence the internal affairs of developing countries under the guise of environmentalism.

India, the United States, China, and Russia—ranked among the world’s largest producers of trash and plastics—have blocked global caps on plastic production. In negotiations for the UN Global Plastics Treaty, this bloc of nations (along with oil-producing powers) has firmly rejected binding agreements to restrict production at the source, limiting the scope of treaties strictly to waste management. This lack of consensus has caused successive rounds of UN negotiations (such as those held in Busan and Geneva) to end in deadlock.

Does the ultra-environmentalist stance of Europe serve any real purpose? The European Union’s climate agenda, articulated primarily through the European Green Deal, is one of the most fiercely debated topics in modern politics. Supporters argue it is essential for planetary survival and future economic leadership, whereas critics view it as an excessive bureaucratic burden that saps competitiveness and penalizes productive sectors. Given that the EU accounts for less than 7% of global greenhouse gas emissions, critics point out that the massive economic sacrifice accomplishes little unless major polluting powers implement equally strict environmental standards.

Another limitation relates to the difficulties in applying intergenerational justice, given that future generations, by definition, have no direct representation. As a result, they are often poorly defended against the harm they will have to endure due to the “unsustainable” human activities of the past and present. In one chapter of H. G. Wells’s novel The Time Machine, when the protagonist travels to the future, he observes young people attacking the elderly, holding them responsible for exhausting the resources.

According to the International Organization for Migration, “environmental migrants are persons or groups of persons who, predominantly for reasons of sudden or progressive change in the environment that adversely affects their lives or living conditions, are obliged to leave their habitual homes, or choose to do so, either temporarily or permanently, and who move either within their country or abroad.”

The vast majority of these people relocate to other areas within their own country, making international recognition harder since no borders with other States are crossed. Furthermore, it is still difficult to properly identify these forms of forced migration because distinguishing environmental migrants from economic migrants and political refugees remains complex.

International law does not use the word “refugee” for them, as the 1951 Convention only protects those fleeing wars or targeted personal attacks. However, in 2020, the UN Human Rights Committee declared that countries cannot deport individuals facing conditions induced by climate change.

Although terms such as “environmental emigrant,” “environmentally forced emigration,” “environmentally motivated emigration,” “climate refugee,” “climate change refugee,” “climate-displaced person,” “disaster refugee,” “environmental displaced person,” “eco-refugee,” and “ecologically displaced person” have emerged, three subtypes are commonly recognized. Environmental emergency migrants are those who flee temporarily due to an environmental disaster or sudden environmental events such as a hurricane, tsunami, earthquake, volcanic eruption, etc. Environmentally forced migrants or forced migrants are those who must leave due to the degradation of environmental conditions caused by deforestation, shoreline erosion, etc. Finally, there are environmentally induced economic migrants: people who choose to leave their homes to avoid potential future hardship—for instance, someone who leaves due to declining crop yields caused by desertification.

In the 1990s, the number of environmental refugees was estimated at around 25 million. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and Myers & Kent estimate that there will be 250 million refugees by the year 2050, primarily due to the effects of coastal flooding, shoreline erosion, and agricultural disruptions (representing over 2% of the projected global population for that year, around 10 billion people).

One projection regarding the number of future refugees estimates 30 million in China alone, another 30 million in India, 15 million in Bangladesh, 14 million in Egypt, 10 million in other delta and coastal regions, one million in island states, and 50 million displaced from the agricultural sector. In 2026, the figure for environmental refugees has risen, approaching 216 million people displaced within their own countries. In the last year alone, weather-related disasters have caused between 46 and 50 million new displacements.

Global warming: myth or reality

In recent decades, a rise of approximately 0.6 °C in global temperature has been observed. The increase in greenhouse gas production is the cause of this global rise. Climate changes directly affect Earth’s biodiversity, impacting organisms indirectly—such as through altered temperature and precipitation patterns—and directly through changes in circadian rhythms, the biological clock linked to organism physiology and behavior, triggering a cascade effect. No one doubts the existence of climate change, but there is no consensus on whether it is part of a natural cycle or driven by human activity.

There is a connection between El Niño, La Niña, and sea level rise: the former phenomenon lasts between nine and twelve months (potentially extending up to 18 months), whereas La Niña tends to be more prolonged, lasting anywhere from nine months to three years. Both are part of a climate cycle and recur periodically every two to seven years. El Niño temporarily accelerates sea level rise due to heat and increased rainfall over land masses, while La Niña tends to temporarily slow or pause it.

El Niño warms the surface waters of the Pacific Ocean: warm water expands and occupies more volume, raising sea levels, driving heavy rainfall on land, and temporarily shifting vast masses of water from the ocean to the continents. Conversely, La Niña cools eastern Pacific waters and leads to water retention on land. During this phase, heavier rainfall falls over terrestrial basins and accumulates as soil moisture or rain, temporarily removing volume from the oceans and producing sea level increases that are much lower or well below the long-term expected average.

Furthermore, a multitude of natural disasters occur—such as desertification, water scarcity, the salinization of irrigated land, and biodiversity loss—all of which cause widespread famines. Mass human displacements are also triggered by typhoons, torrential rains, floods, and mudslides, not to mention wildfires, volcanic activity, and earthquakes.

The planet as we know it is changing, and maps from the 20th century and earlier no longer match 2026 coordinates due to disappearing islands, shrinking coastlines, and the drying up of lakes and inland seas. The latter are vanishing at an accelerated rate due to the massive diversion of rivers for agriculture and increased evaporation from climate change. An emblematic example is the Aral Sea in Central Asia, which lost over 90% of its original surface area following the diversion of its tributary rivers (the Amu Darya and Syr Darya) during the Soviet era for cotton cultivation. Today, it is a sandy desert.

But it is not the only body of water losing capacity: the world’s largest inland body of water, the Caspian Sea, is undergoing a continuous retreat of tens of meters due to reduced inflow from the Volga River and rising temperatures. Lake Urmia in Iran and Lake Poopó in Bolivia face extreme flow reductions caused by aquifer depletion and prolonged droughts.

However, the main causes should not be blamed on Nature, but on human activity through the excessive extraction of water from rivers feeding these endorheic (landlocked) basins for intensive crop irrigation. Lake Victoria, which borders Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania, is dying due to massive dumping of plastics, agricultural fertilizers, and direct urban sewage, creating dead zones.

Coupled with higher temperatures, this accelerates evaporation, reduces the rainfall needed to replenish water levels, and brings severe environmental and social consequences—such as ecosystem loss and the accompanying destruction of native aquatic flora and fauna, alongside the disappearance of migratory birds and mammals. The dried-up lakebeds accumulate salt, pesticides, and fertilizers, which are swept up by toxic dust storms that harm human health and agricultural soil.

Yet, as dire as the drying of inland seas and lakes is, sea level rise is even worse. Fernando Novo, a consultant in water resource management and the environment, estimates that “by 2050, sea levels will have risen half a meter, causing the flood-driven displacement of over 860 million people who currently live primarily in one of the 570 coastal megacities.”

The ‘water wars’

Beyond the disasters stemming from racial and religious conflicts, one of the deadliest issues involves wars triggered or exacerbated by scarcity, control, and unequal access to water resources. Recent UN reports warn of a global water bankruptcy caused by climate change, overexploitation, and population growth. Water can be—and indeed is—used as a weapon: in current conflict zones, water infrastructure (such as desalination plants, dams, or supply networks) is targeted militarily, used as leverage for political pressure, or controlled as a means of survival.

More than 60% of water-related conflicts and attacks occur within national borders, driven by local inequality and mismanagement. The main geopolitical flashpoints are located in the Middle East, the region with the highest recorded number of violent incidents, notably featuring the historical control of water in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and tensions in the Tigris and Euphrates basins between Turkey, Syria, and Iraq.

The Nile Basin represents another focal point of tension: disputes among Ethiopia, Egypt, and Sudan over megaprojects like the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam cause ongoing instability in North Africa. In South Asia, disagreements over the control of shared rivers, such as friction around the Indus between India and Pakistan, raise the region’s strategic risk. However, Fernando Novo remains optimistic “if countries cooperatively manage transboundary water resources, as Algeria is doing in agreement with Tunisia and Libya.”

In some cases, climate change can lead to conflicts arising between countries producing large numbers of refugees—due to flooding or other extreme conditions—and neighboring countries that refuse to accept them. The border between India and Bangladesh is increasingly defined by the border wall India is constructing, and studies already suggest the potential for violent conflicts stemming from people fleeing areas devastated by the loss of arable land.

Overfarming, accompanied by deforestation and widespread water pollution from discharge in Africa, Asia, and the Americas, represents one of the greatest ecological disasters of the 21st century. The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) warns that over 300 million people face life-threatening risks from waterborne pathogens across these three continents, where up to 80% of urban and industrial wastewater is discharged without any prior treatment.

Uncontrolled dumping of wastewater and toxic substances destroys river ecosystems, depletes aquatic oxygen, and wipes out flora and fauna throughout river basins. Industry discharges heavy chemicals, metals, and toxic waste without adequate treatment, while urban wastewater introduces excess organic matter, detergents, and fecal bacteria that overwhelm rivers’ natural self-purification capacity. Intensive agricultural practices must also be considered, as they leach fertilizers, nitrates, and pesticides responsible for eutrophication (algal blooms that deplete oxygen). Environmental destruction causes critical oxygen loss (anoxia), leaving one out of every seven kilometers of river across these three continents completely devoid of oxygen due to organic overload, decimating freshwater fisheries.

The discharge of saline water from mining and inefficient irrigation systems permanently destroys the productive capacity of agricultural land. Moreover, pharmaceutical pollution causes rivers in developing countries to contain extremely high concentrations of drug residues, hormones, and microplastics that render wildlife sterile and give rise to hyper-resistant superbugs.

In Africa, population growth without sanitation infrastructure and the exploitation of natural resources are suffocating ecosystems. Decades of oil spills by extractive multinationals have destroyed hectares of mangroves and wetlands, poisoning the water and land that millions of communities rely on in the Niger Delta in Nigeria. The Nile receives millions of tons of industrial chemical waste, organic refuse, and agricultural runoff annually, disrupting biodiversity and leading to the extinction of dozens of edible fish species. The situation along the Kafue River in Zambia is horrifying: an industrial mining collapse released tons of waste containing arsenic, cyanide, mercury, and lead, destroying aquatic life in hours and ravaging crops.

In Central and South America, illegal mining, agrochemicals, and waste have caused approximately 25% of river stretches to suffer severe contamination from pathogens and industrial chemicals. Illegal gold mining in the Amazon basin dumps tons of mercury directly into rivers, polluting the food chain of fish and Indigenous communities, who suffer severe neurological damage.

The Río Grande / Río Bravo (in Mexico and the US) is increasingly affected by drought, heavy agricultural diversion, and constant toxic discharge from border manufacturing plants. The Río de la Plata, between Argentina and Uruguay, carries a heavy load of pesticide-ridden agricultural runoff alongside massive amounts of untreated urban and industrial waste. The situation is hardly better in the Darién Gap between Panama and Colombia: the migration crisis has caused a collapse in the rivers of this protected ecosystem, now choked with tons of plastics, human waste, and biological debris.

For its part, Asia holds the highest concentration of biologically and chemically “dead” rivers on the planet due to rapid industrialization. The Citarum River in Indonesia holds the dubious honor of being considered one of the most polluted in the world, receiving over 20,000 tons of waste and chemical effluents daily from thousands of textile factories. The sacred Ganges features fecal coliform levels exceeding safe limits by more than 100 times, overwhelmed by domestic, industrial, and ritual waste.

The situation of the Yangtze River in China is barely any better: it receives nearly 42% of all contaminated wastewater in that vast country, including heavy metals and agricultural pesticides, washing massive amounts of nitrogen into the ocean. The Salween River in Southeast Asia is completely saturated with sulfur, copper, zinc, cadmium, and mercury due to heavy mining and industrial activity.

According to Fernando Novo, “there are five areas in the world that could practically be considered new ‘countries’ due to their size. However, this is not the emergence of new land caused by tectonic shocks beneath the seabed, but rather the work of human hands: they are gigantic islands spanning hundreds of kilometers, made of billions of plastic waste items. Two are in the Atlantic Ocean, two in the Indian Ocean, and one in the Pacific. They act as a sort of artificial Sargasso Sea, swirling around themselves in a macabre, endless dance.” Novo is far from optimistic about the ocean’s future, estimating that “by 2100, there will be more plastic in the sea than fish.”

Another severe human and environmental crisis has been caused by mass fishing carried out by massive factory trawlers operating in international waters, ruining the livelihoods of local coastal fishers, particularly in the Gulf of Guinea and the Indian Ocean. While not an excuse, men from coastal villages have swapped their traditional artisanal fishing practices for the far more lucrative business of piracy and hijacking the very large vessels that wiped out their traditional means of survival.

Environmental racism

The term environmental racism is used to refer to environmental injustice and describes unequal ecological relations between industrialized nations and the Global South. It applies to how ethnic minorities face disproportionate exposure to pollutants or are denied access to Nature, such as clean air, drinking water, and other ecological benefits.

So-called eco-imperialism, eco-colonialism, or environmental imperialism refers to what is perceived as a Western strategy to influence the internal affairs of developing countries under the guise of environmentalism.

India, the United States, China, and Russia—ranked among the world’s largest producers of trash and plastics—have blocked global caps on plastic production. In negotiations for the UN Global Plastics Treaty, this bloc of nations (along with oil-producing powers) has firmly rejected binding agreements to restrict production at the source, limiting the scope of treaties strictly to waste management. This lack of consensus has caused successive rounds of UN negotiations (such as those held in Busan and Geneva) to end in deadlock.

Does the ultra-environmentalist stance of Europe serve any real purpose? The European Union’s climate agenda, articulated primarily through the European Green Deal, is one of the most fiercely debated topics in modern politics. Supporters argue it is essential for planetary survival and future economic leadership, whereas critics view it as an excessive bureaucratic burden that saps competitiveness and penalizes productive sectors. Given that the EU accounts for less than 7% of global greenhouse gas emissions, critics point out that the massive economic sacrifice accomplishes little unless major polluting powers implement equally strict environmental standards.

Another limitation relates to the difficulties in applying intergenerational justice, given that future generations, by definition, have no direct representation. As a result, they are often poorly defended against the harm they will have to endure due to the “unsustainable” human activities of the past and present. In one chapter of H. G. Wells’s novel The Time Machine, when the protagonist travels to the future, he observes young people attacking the elderly, holding them responsible for exhausting the resources.

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