France’s First Climate Refugee – A Sign of a Promising Future for Climate Migration?

18 March 2021 – by Flora Bensadon

In December 2020, France officially recognized its first climate refugee – a 40-year-old Bangladeshi man with severe respiratory asthma. The appeals court in Bordeaux overturned his deportation order, finding that the substantial level of air pollution in Bangladesh would only exacerbate his condition.

Sheel, as the media named him, fled persecution he faced in his hometown north of Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh. He arrived in France in 2011 where he settled in Toulouse and has since made a living for himself. 

Sheel suffers from severe asthma and sleep apnea for which he needs careful medical treatment that is unavailable in Bangladesh. Upon his arrival in France, Sheel applied for political asylum but his claim was denied by the French Government, leading him to start a procedure for a residence permit as a “sick” foreigner. Sheel was granted a temporary residence permit as a sick foreigner in 2015, as this kind of permit is only granted to those who cannot receive proper treatment in their home country and whose life would be put at risk if they were to be sent back.

The case

In 2019, however, the Haute-Garonne (French department) Prefecture did not renew his residence permit claiming that he would be able to receive proper treatment in Bangladesh. As a result, on 18 June 2019 the Prefecture issued Sheel an expulsion order (or, ‘OQTF’ – Obligation de Quitter le Territoire Français). 

Sheel’s lawyer, Ludovic Rivière, argued that not only would he receive poor medical treatment in his home country but due to the high level of air pollution in Bangladesh, his condition would only worsen. In fact, the Environmental Performance Index of Yale University and Columbia University ranks Bangladesh as 179th in terms of air quality in 2020. In addition to this, the level of fine particles in the air in Bangladesh is six times higher than the maximum required by the World Health Organization (WHO). The WHO figures for 2016 also show that 82% of the 572,600 deaths recorded from non-communicable diseases in Bangladesh were caused by air pollution.

In light of those arguments, on 15 June 2020, the Administrative Court of Toulouse cancelled the OQTF as it estimated that provision of Sheel’s required medical treatment would not be adequate in Bangladesh. The Haute-Garonne Prefecture appealed that decision, and the case was then brought before the court of Administrative Appeals in Bordeaux in December 2020. 

Mr. Rivière’s plea was founded on environmental arguments, which he defended by presenting the court with the WHO figures. The court ultimately decided to permit Sheel to stay on French territory and cited the environmental criteria to justify the final decision. The court in fact noted that sending Sheel back to Bangladesh would lead to an “aggravation of his respiratory disease due to air pollution”.

A symbol for greater protection of climate refugees in Europe? 

The notion of a “climate refugee” is not officially inscribed in the French legal system – Sheel is therefore not legally referred to as one. Although environmental criteria have been evoked in some French cases, Sheels’ is the first where environmental degradation is used as the leading argument for the final ruling. Could this possibly open the door for other similar cases? Could this case be seen as a step toward a change in migration policy in Europe, particularly as the number of climate migrants is predicted to rise to 200 million by 2050?

François Gemenne, teacher and specialist in environment-related migration, stated that while he sees Sheel’s case as a step in the right direction, it is unlikely that this outcome will become frequent unless the criteria for asylum are broadened. His reason for this belief is that many asylum seekers that are victims of conflict and/or persecution are often also victims of environmental degradation. Whilst the authorities are aware of this, the lack of regulations and structures protecting climate migrants makes it unlikely for these arguments to be accepted as the main justification for asylum.

However, this could possibly change with the Nansen Agenda, a “state-led consultative process to build consensus on a Protection Agenda addressing the needs of people displaced across borders in the context of disasters and climate change”. This initiative was ratified by 110 countries in 2015, including France, and has the potential to clearly define the protection criteria for climate refugees. The issue is, like many immigration policies, it is non-binding, allowing countries to deflect their responsibility to protect refugees. 
While these – the Sheel outcome and Nansen Agenda – are extraordinary first steps for providing solutions to climate migration, policies that clearly protect climate migrants and refugees need to be put in place soon as the number of climate migrants is only set to rise.

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