Climate Justice and Climate Displacement: Evaluating the Emerging Legal and Policy Responses

Abstract

Scientists believe that climate change will displace hundreds of millions of people by 2050. Most of this displacement will occur in the ecologically and economically vulnerable states of the Global South. Neither international refugee law nor the legal regime governing climate change has developed legal protections for persons displaced by climate change. The Paris Agreement, which was adopted in 2015 as a protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), includes a loss and damage mechanism designed to avert and address displacement. However, this mechanism is in its infancy, and its future direction is uncertain. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), approved by the United Nations member states in September 2015, call for actions to combat climate change, but do not directly address climate justice or climate displacement. This article examines the role of the Paris Agreement, the SDGs, and various soft law instruments in forging just solutions to the problem of climate change-induced migration.

Keywords: Environmental justice, climate justice, migration, climate displacement, Sustainable Development Goals, Paris Agreement, loss and damage