CLIMATE-INDUCED MIGRATION: GAPS IN REFUGEE LAW AND THE RIGHT TO ENVIRONMENTAL ASYLUM

Abstract

Climate change has been acknowledged not only as a development challenge that has a strong effect on human displacement. Higher sea levels, desertification, extreme weather events and ensuing long spells of drought are displacing people in their millions as they are driven to seek shelter and feeding grounds. International refugee law, at least the 1951 Refugee Convention, does not acknowledge as a refugee migrant who have been displaced by the impacts of climate change as they leave them without possible protections and rights that would ensure such migrants enjoy immunity to asylum. The paper critically evaluates the phenomenon of climate-related migration and the massive loopholes that deny access of the environmental migrants to the status of a refugee in the existing international systems.

The paper takes a critical view of how a refugee is defined under the convention of 1951 and its 1967 Protocol, and how it fails to deal with climate related displacement. It also examines infamous cases and policy responses by directly affected areas like the pacific islands, sub-Saharan Africa, and south Asia, the regions where climate vulnerability correlates strongly with displacement. Based on this examination, the paper highlights how important it is to change the laws and how these laws should also consider the protection of what can be referred to as environment asylum. It also tests proposed legal solutions such as an expansion of human rights-based approaches, the use of soft law instruments and the development of regional initiatives that can address some of the normative gaps.

This paper aids in adding to this debate on environmental justice and migration by critically evaluating the legal systems that exist today and promoting reforms that speak on behalf of everyone. It makes specific policy recommendations on how to reinforce protection mechanisms to the persons who are displaced as a result of climate change and how the international community should safeguard the dignity and rights of all migrants no matter the cause of their movement.