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Climate Displacement and the Legal Gymnastics of Justice: Is It All Political?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 August 2021

Andrea C. Simonelli
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Abstract

The future for people becoming displaced due to climate processes is still unknown. The effects of climate change are more apparent every day, and those most acutely impacted are still unable to access an appropriate legal remedy for their woes. Two new books evaluate the limits to international legal protections and the application of justice. Climate Change, Disasters, and the Refugee Convention, by Matthew Scott, investigates the assumptions underpinning the dichotomy between refugees and those facing adversity due to climate-induced disasters. Climate Change and People on the Move: International Law and Justice, by Fanny Thornton, goes further by examining how justice is used—and curtailed—by international instruments of protection. Thornton's legal analysis is thorough and thoughtful, but also demonstrative of the limitations of justice when confined by historical precedent and political indifference. With so little still being done to hold industries to account, is it any surprise that the legal system is not yet ready to protect those harmed by carbon pollution? Demanding justice for climate displacees is an indictment of modern Western economics and development; it implicates entire national lifestyles and the institutions and people that support them.

Keywords

climate changedisplacementmigrationrefugeedisasterjustice
Type
Review Essay
Information
Ethics & International Affairs , Volume 35 , Issue 2 , Summer 2021 , pp. 303 - 312
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs

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References

NOTES

1 A Google News search for “climate refugee,” performed on February 1, 2021, returned 803,000 results.

2 “New Zealand: ‘Climate Change Refugee’ Case Overview,” Library of Congress, updated December 30, 2020, www.loc.gov/law/help/climate-change-refugee/new-zealand.php.

3 AF (Kiribati) [2013] NZIPT 800413 (25 June 2013), New Zealand Immigration and Protection Tribunal, para 2, www.nzlii.org/nz/cases/NZIPT/2013/800413.html.

4 United Nations Conference of Plenipotentiaries on the Status of Refugees and Stateless Persons, Article 1(2), “Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees” (adopted July 28, 1951), www.ohchr.org/en/professionalinterest/pages/statusofrefugees.aspx.

5 Peter Beech, “What Is Environmental Racism?,” World Economic Forum, July 31, 2020, www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/07/what-is-environmental-racism-pollution-covid-systemic/.

6 “Marshall Islands Becomes Top Flag for World's Tanker Fleet,” gCaptain (blog), October 10, 2016, gcaptain.com/marshall-islands-becomes-top-flag-for-worlds-tanker-fleet/.

7 Rutkowski, Lawrence, “The Marshall Islands,” in Eddings, George, Chamberlain, Andrew, and Colaço, Holly, eds., Shipping Law Review, 7th ed. (London: Law Business Research, 2020), p. 641Google Scholar.

8 Kate Galbraith, “Marshall Islands, the Flag for Many Ships, Seeks to Rein in Emissions,” New York Times, June 3, 2015, www.nytimes.com/2015/06/04/business/international/marshall-islands-shipping-greenhouse-gas-emissions.html.

9 Andrew Clark, “BP Oil Rig Registration Raised in Congress over Safety Concerns,” Guardian, May 30, 2010, www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/may/30/oil-spill-deepwater-horizon-marshall-islands.

10 Burkett, Maxine, “Loss and Damage,” Climate Law 4, nos. 1–2 (2014), pp. 119–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar; United Nations, Decision/CP.16, “The Cancun Agreements: Outcome of the Work of the Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-Term Cooperative Action under the Convention,” in “Framework Convention on Climate Change,” FCCC/CP/2010/7/Add.1, March 15, 2011; Conway, Darragh, Loss and Damage in the Paris Agreement (briefing note, Climate Focus, Amsterdam, 2015)Google Scholar; and Simonelli, Andrea C., “Migration and Climate Change,” in Lechter, Trevor, ed., Managing Global Warming: An Interface of Technology and Human Issues (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2019)Google Scholar.

11 Andrea C. Simonelli specifically posed the question “Would reinsurance work for slow impact disasters such as sea level rise and desertification?” to the reinsurer on the panel at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) side event for Where the Rain Falls held on December 3, 2012. The reinsurer replied that because so many people would be impacted at once and the risk is basically “certain,” microinsurance would not be able to pay out under these conditions. Insurance like this still needs to spread around the risk. Andrea C. Simonelli, “How to Integrate Migration into Adaptation Strategies and Planning,” side event, International Organization for Migration at UNFCCC Conference 18, PowerPoint, Where the Rain Falls, side event, UNFCCC Conference, Doha, Qatar, December 3, 2012), www.iom.int/fr/iom-unfccc-conference-18-doha.

12 Sophie Yeo, “Where Climate Cash Is Flowing and Why It's Not Enough,” Nature, September 17, 2019.

13 At the Nansen Conference: Climate Change and Displacement in the 21st Century, held in Oslo, Norway, in June 2011, António Guterres, the UN high commissioner for refugees, offered an opening statement in which he said that the UNHCR had refused to accept any label such as “climate refugee” or “environmental refugee,” as doing so would confuse the UNHCR's efforts to protect those who are persecuted.

14 Simonelli, Andrea C., Governing Climate Induced Migration and Displacement: IGO Expansion and Global Policy Implications (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.