In the Swedish magazine Artikel 14 (issue #4/2014), researcher Matthew Scott writes about the very first family that was officially granted asylum as refugees from climate change. In 2014 a family from Tuvalu in Polynesia was granted asylum in New Zealand on humanitarian grounds, and climate change was explicitly mentioned as the reason. Meanwhile, around 22 million people were in migration due to natural disasters in 2013, and the number is expected to rise sharply over the years ahead.
There is also the question of what other catastrophies are provoked by climate change in addition to natural disasters, such as famine following drought, and war following famine, for example. In a blogpost at Copyriot.se, researcher Rasmus Fleischer writes about Romanian migrants in a provisory camp in a Stockholm suburb, Högdalen. He argues that, as the migrants left their homes after a disastrous flood that hit not just Romania but several countries in south east Europe in 2014, they could be considered as climate refugees (in addition to being persecuted on ethnic grounds).
Sunshine Socialist Cinema 