About a quarter of the worlds refugee population lives in camps. These refugees have already fled unsafe and unstable situations such as civil or regional war, natural disasters, or religious, ethnic, or racial prosecution in their home countries. However, by 2050, the UN predicts that most of the camps will be uninhabitable due to climate change-induced conditions.

Double displacement is when an individual is first displaced by an initial event and becomes a refugee, migrant, or internally displaced person (IDP). If a climate or environmental disaster impacts the refugee camp, the individual becomes displaced a second time. The most prominent example of this occurred during the 2023 earthquake along the Turkey-Syria border. Hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees in Turkey were displaced for a second time as a result of the earthquake, making it twice as hard to find a long term resettlement.

However, this is happening all around the world. In Bangladesh, refugee camps are flooding. In Jordan, the camps are vulnerable to desertification. It is imperative we design a better climate refugee framework to accommodate for doubly displaced refugees.