"Advocates are working to ensure that world leaders don’t ignore people displaced by climate change."

"Vladimir Carrasco arrived in Belém, Brazil, three weeks ago with a clear mission: to amplify the voices of people displaced by extreme weather disasters. He was attending the annual international climate treaty negotiations known as COP30 for the first time. As climate justice director for L.A.’s Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, or CHIRLA, Carrasco has seen how worsening climate change forces families abroad to flee to the U.S. He returned to L.A. disappointed.

“There was minimal conversation about immigrants,” he said.

Immigrants, refugees, and climate-displaced people remain one of the groups most vulnerable to climate change, which is largely caused by the fossil fuel industry’s pollution. Over the past decade, weather disasters have forced about 250 million people to search for new homes within their countries, a recent U.N. report estimates. That’s 70,000 people a day. And these numbers don’t capture those who cross international borders.

There are the Central American farmers who have been pushed into cities after prolonged droughts kill their crops yet again. And the families from the archipelago of Tuvalu in the Pacific who are already relocating to neighboring Australia. Scientists predict the chain of islands and atolls will be mostly underwater by 2100 as glaciers melt."

Yessenia Funes reports for Yale Climate Connections December 2, 2025. [2]