Book contents
- Ecoviolence Studies
- Ecoviolence Studies
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Foreword
- Foreword
- Preface and Acknowledgments
- 1 Ecoviolence Studies and Human Security
- 2 The Links between Human Trafficking and Wildlife Trafficking
- 3 Preventing a Secondary Disaster: How Emergency Management Agencies Can Prepare and Respond to Disaster-Linked Exploitation
- 4 Ecoviolence at Sea
- 5 There Will Be Blood: The Return of the Frontier Logic in Guyana and Hyper-Exploitation in the Mining Sector
- 6 Artisanal Gold Mining in Uganda: Towards Formalization as Remediation of Dignity and Rights
- 7 Searching for Shelter in the Climate Crisis Era: Ecocide and Migration
- 8 Climate Change, Violence and Ecocide
- 9 Sea of Cortez Region: Crime and Ecosystem Crossroads
- 10 Minority Languages as Collateral Damage in the Climate Crisis: The Incidental Result of Ecoviolence on Y Gymraeg/Welsh Language
- Index
- References
7 - Searching for Shelter in the Climate Crisis Era: Ecocide and Migration
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 February 2025
Book contents
- Ecoviolence Studies
- Ecoviolence Studies
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Foreword
- Foreword
- Preface and Acknowledgments
- 1 Ecoviolence Studies and Human Security
- 2 The Links between Human Trafficking and Wildlife Trafficking
- 3 Preventing a Secondary Disaster: How Emergency Management Agencies Can Prepare and Respond to Disaster-Linked Exploitation
- 4 Ecoviolence at Sea
- 5 There Will Be Blood: The Return of the Frontier Logic in Guyana and Hyper-Exploitation in the Mining Sector
- 6 Artisanal Gold Mining in Uganda: Towards Formalization as Remediation of Dignity and Rights
- 7 Searching for Shelter in the Climate Crisis Era: Ecocide and Migration
- 8 Climate Change, Violence and Ecocide
- 9 Sea of Cortez Region: Crime and Ecosystem Crossroads
- 10 Minority Languages as Collateral Damage in the Climate Crisis: The Incidental Result of Ecoviolence on Y Gymraeg/Welsh Language
- Index
- References
Summary
This chapter analyzes one of the most visible consequences of ecocide: eco-migration. The international criminal justice system does not include detrimental effects of ecocide or of social harm resulting in forced migration flows as a genuine crime capable of being prosecuted. However, a recent landmark United Nations Human Rights Committee decision claims that people should not be returned to their place of origin if climate change appears to constitute a threat. The United Nations Refugee Agency also welcomes such a pioneering ruling since it lays the ground for potentially effective international protection. This work examines the contemporary loophole regarding eco-displacements and ecocide and clamors for both legal and criminological international conceptualisation at ensuring the rights of eco-migrants, considering the future number of eco-migrants is unforeseeable.
Keywords
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Ecoviolence StudiesHuman Exploitation and Environmental Crime, pp. 121 - 138Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2025
References
Address of his Holiness Pope Francis to participants at the World Congress of the International Association of Penal Law, Friday, 15 November 2019. https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/speeches/2019/november/documents/papa-francesco_20191115_diritto-penale.html.Google Scholar
Ayeb-Karlsson, S., Smith, C. D. & Kniveton, D. (2018). A discursive review of the textual use of ‘trapped’ in environmental migration studies: The conceptual birth and troubled teenage years of trapped populations. Ambio. A Journal of the Human Environment 47, 557–573.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Becker, M. (2014). The discourse about legal protection for environmental refugees: re-constructing categories – rethinking policies. In F. Gesing, J. Herbeck & S. Klepp (Eds), Denaturalizing Climate Change: Migration, Mobilities and Space (ARTEC paper No. 200). University of Bremen, 77–85.Google Scholar
Bedarff, H. & Jakobeit, C. (2017). Climate Change, Migration, and Displacement: The Underestimated Disaster. Greenpeace Germany.Google Scholar
Bernaz, N. (2017). An analysis of the ICC Office of the Prosecutor’s Policy Paper on case selection and prioritization from the perspective of business and human rights. Journal of International Criminal Justice 15(3), 527–542.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Biermann, F. & Boas, I. (2010). Preparing for a warmer world: towards a global governance system to protect climate refugees. Global Environmental Politics 10(1), 60–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brisman, A. & South, N. (2018). Autosarcophagy in the Anthropocene and the obscenity of an epoch. In Holley, C. & Shearing, C. (Eds.), Criminology and the Anthropocene. Routledge, 25–49.Google Scholar
Brisman, A. & South, N. (2019). Green criminology and environmental crimes and harms. Sociology Compass 13(1), 1–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brisman, A. & South, N. (Eds.). (2020). Routledge International Handbook of Green Criminology (2nd ed.). Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brisman, A., South, N. & Walters, R. (2018). Climate Apartheid and Environmental Refugees, In Carrington, K., Hogg, R.Scott, J., & Sozzo, M. (Eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Criminology and the Global South. Palgrave Macmillan, 301–321.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brown, L. R., McGrath, P. & Stokes, B. (1976). Twenty-two Dimensions of the Population Problem, Worldwatch Paper 5. Worldwatch Institute.Google Scholar
Brouwer, J., van der Woude, M. & van der Leun, J. (2017). Framing migration and the process of crimmigration: a systematic analysis of the media representation of unauthorized immigrants in the Netherlands. European Journal of Criminology 14(1), 100–119.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Chin-Yee, S. (2019). Climate Change and Security: Linking vulnerable populations to increased security risks in the face of the global climate challenge. King’s College London: EUCERS Strategy Paper 18, February, 2–31.Google Scholar
Cramer, W., Guiot, J., Fader, M., Garrabou, J., Gatusso, J-P., Iglesias, A., Lange, M., Lionello, P., Llasat, M. C., Paz, S., Peñuelas, J., Snoussi, M., Toreti, A., Tsimplis, M. N. & Xoplaki, E. (2018). Climate change and interconnected risks to sustainable development in the Mediterranean. Nature Climate Change 8, 972–980.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Etzold, B. & Sakdapolrak, P. (2016). Socio-spatialities of vulnerability: towards a polymorphic perspective in vulnerability research. Journal of the Geographical Society of Berlin 147 (4), 234–251.Google Scholar
Farbotko, C. & Lazrus, H. (2012). The first climate refugees? Contesting global narratives of climate change in Tuvalu. Global Environmental Change 22(2), 382–390.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Farbotko, C., McMichael, C., Dun, O., Ransan‐Cooper, H., McNamara, K. E. & Thornton, F. (2018). Transformative mobilities in the Pacific: Promoting adaptation and development in a changing climate. Asia & The Pacific Policy Studies 5(3), 393–407.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Foresight (2011). Migration and Global Environmental Change. UK Government Office for Science.Google Scholar
Fröhlich, C. & Kleep, S. (2018). Climate Change and Migration Crises in Oceania. Peace Institute.Google Scholar
García Ruiz, A. (2018). Del ecocidio y los procesos migratorios a la opacidad de la victimización ecológica. Revista Electrónica de Ciencia Penal y Criminología 20(11), 1–44.Google Scholar
García Ruiz, A., South, N. & Brisman, A. (2022). Eco-crimes and ecocide at sea: toward a new blue criminology, International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology 66(4), 407–429.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gauger, A., Rabatel-Fernel, M. P., Kulbicki, L., Short, D. & Higgins, P. (2012). Ecocide is the missing 5th Crime Against Peace. The Ecocide Project, Human Rights Consortium, School of Advanced Study, University of London.Google Scholar
Gemenne, F. & Brücker, P. (2015). From the guiding principles on internal displacement to the Nansen Initiative: what the governance of environmental migration can learn from the governance of internal displacement. International Journal of Refugee Law 27(2), 245–263.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Greenpeace International. (2018). Vanuatu warns fossil fuel companies could be sued over climate change. Greenpeace International.Google Scholar
Groen, D. & Suleimenova, D. (2019, November 28). Climate refugees: why we can’t yet predict where millions of displaced people will go, The Conversation. http://theconversation.com/climate-refugees-why-we-cant-yet-predict-where-millions-of-displaced-people-will-go-119414.Google Scholar
Higgins, P. (2012). Earth is our Business. Changing the Rules of the Game, Shepheard-Walwyn.Google Scholar
Higgins, P. (2015). Eradicating Ecocide. Exposing the Corporate and Political Practices Destroying the Planet and Proposing the Laws to Eradicate Ecocide (2nd ed.), Shepheard-Walwyn.Google Scholar
Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre. (2017). Global Report on Internal Displacement, Bilak, A. (Dir.). Norwegian Refugee Council. IDMC.Google Scholar
International Criminal Court. (2016). Policy Paper on Case Selection and Prioritisation, Office of the Prosecutor, 15 September.Google Scholar
International Organization for Migration. (2007). Ninety-Fourth Session. IOM Council Discussion Note: Migration and the Environment, December 1, 2007 (MC/INF/288). https://eea.iom.int/migration-management.Google Scholar
International Organization for Migration. (2008). Climate Change and Migration: Improving Methodologies to Estimate Flows, Migration Research Series no 33. https://publications.iom.int/system/files/pdf/mrs-33.pdf.Google Scholar
Ionesco, D., Mokhnacheva, D. & Gemenne, F. (2017). The Atlas of Environmental Migration, Routledge.Google Scholar
Klepp, S. & Chavez-Rodriguez, L. (2018). Governing climate change: the power of adaptation discourses, policies, and practices. In Klepp, S. & Chavez-Rodriguez, L. (Eds.), A Critical Approach to Climate Change Adaptation. Discourses, Policies, and Practices. Routledge, 3‒34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Klepp, S. & Fröhlich, C. (2020). Editorial: migration and conflict in a global warming era: a political understanding of climate change, special issue. Social Sciences 9(5), 78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McAdam, J. (2016). Building international approaches to climate change, disasters, and displacement. Windsor Yearbook of Access to Justice. 33(2), 1‒14.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McFadden, J. N. & Knoll, E. (1970). War crimes and the American conscience. Congressional Conference on War and National Responsibility. Holt, Rinehart and Winston.Google Scholar
McGree, S., Smith, G., Chandler, E., Herold, N., Begg, Z., Kuleshov, Y., Malsale, P. & Ritman, M. (2022). Climate Change in the Pacific 2022: Historical and Recent Variability, Extremes and Change. Climate and Oceans Support Program in the Pacific. Pacific Community, Suva, Fiji.Google Scholar
McNamara, K., Bronen, R., Fernando, S. & Klepp, S. (2018). The complex decision-making of climate-induced relocation: adaptation and loss and damage. Climate Policy 18(1), 111‒117.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
MedECC. (2019). Risks associated to climate and environmental changes in the Mediterranean región: a preliminary assessment by the MedECC Network Science-policy interface. MedECC.Google Scholar
Morrissey, J. (2012). Contextualizing links between migration and environmental change in northern Ethiopia, In Hastrup, K. & Fog Olwig, K. (Eds.), Climate Change and Human Mobility: Challenges to the Social Sciences. Cambridge University Press, 110–146.Google Scholar
Myers, L. & Theytaz-Bergman, L. (2017). Child Labour Report 2017. The Neglected Link: Effects of Climate Change and Environmental Degradation on Child Labour. Terre des Hommes International Federation.Google Scholar
Nabenyo, E. (2020). Climate-induced involuntary migration: nomadic-pastoralists’ search for elusive pastures in Kenya, Forced Migration Review 64, 10-12. https://www.fmreview.org/sites/fmr/files/FMRdownloads/en/issue64/issue64.pdf.Google Scholar
Nett, K. & Rüttinger, L. (2016). Insurgency, Terrorism and Organised Crime in a Warming Climate. Analysing the Links Between Climate Change and Non-State Armed Groups. Adelphi.Google Scholar
Ober, K. & Sakdapolrak, P. (2017). How do social practices shape policy? Analyzing the field of ‘migration as adaptation’ with Bourdieu’s Theory of Practice. The Geographical Journal 183(4), 359‒369.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pérez-Solero, R. (2020, November 25). Can Spain fix its worst ecological crisis by making a lagoon a legal person?, The Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/nov/18/can-spain-fix-its-worst-ecological-disaster-by-making-a-lagoon-a-legal-person.Google Scholar
Piguet, E., Pécoud, A. & De Guchteneire, P. (2011). Migration and climate change: an overview. Refugee Survey Quarterly, 33(3), 1‒23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Robinson, C., Dilkina, B. & Moreno-Cruz, J. (2020). Modeling migration patterns in the USA under sea level rise. PLoS ONE 15(1), 1‒12.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Santos, C. & Mourato, J. (2022). Voices of contention: the value of development narratives in the age of climate (change) migration misconceptions. Climate and Development 14(1), 13‒24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schewel, K. (2020). Understanding immobility: moving beyond the mobility bias in migration studies. International Migration Review 54(2), 328‒355.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Skinnider, E. (2013). Effect, Issues and Challenges for Victims of Crimes that have a Significant Impact on the Environment. Research Report Issue: Violence against Women and Children. International Centre for Criminal Law Reform and Criminal Justice Policy, March, Vancouver, 1‒9.Google Scholar
Soriano, C. (2020). On the Anthropocene formalization and the proposal by the Anthropocene Working Group. Geologica Acta 18(6), 1‒10. doi: 10.1344/GeologicaActa2020.18.6.Google Scholar
South, N. (2010). The ecocidal tendencies of late modernity: transnational crime, social exclusion, victims and rights. In White, R. (Ed.), Global Environmental Harm. Criminological Perspectives. Willan Publishing, 228–247.Google Scholar
South, N. (2012). Climate change, environmental (in)security, conflict and crime. In Farrall, S., Ahmed, T. & French, D. (Eds.), Criminological and Legal Consequences of Climate Change. Hart Publishing, 97–111.Google Scholar
South, N. (2019). Arcologies, eco-shelters and environmental exemption: constructing new divisions and inequalities in the anthropocene. International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy. https://doi.org/10.5204/ijcjsd.v9i2.1007.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stumpf, J. P. (2006). The crimmigration crisis: immigrants, crime, and sovereign power. American University Law Review 56(2), 367‒419.Google Scholar
Department of State: United States of America. (2019). Trafficking in Person Report 2019, 129‒130. https://www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/2019-Trafficking-in-Persons-Report.pdf.Google Scholar
United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. (2018). Global Report on Trafficking in Persons. https://www.unodc.org/unodc/data-and-analysis/glotip.html.Google Scholar
United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. (2019). Transnational Organized Crime in Southeast Asia: Evolution, Growth and Impact. https://www.unodc.org/roseap/uploads/documents/Publications/2019/SEA_TOCTA_2019_web.pdf.Google Scholar
Watts, N., Amann, M., Arnell, N., et al. (2018). The 2018 report of the Lancet Countdown on health and climate change: shaping the health of nations for centuries to come. The Lancet, 392(10163), 2479‒2514.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
White, R. (2018). Ecocentrism and criminal justice, Theoretical Criminology 22(3), 342‒362.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
White, R. & Kramer, R. (2015). Critical criminology and the struggle against climate change ecocide. Critical Criminology 23(4), 383‒399.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Williams, A. (2008). Turning the tide: recognizing climate change refugees in international law. Law and Policy 30(4), 502‒529.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Xu, C., Kohler, T. A., Lenton, T. M., Svenning, J.-C. & Scheffer, M. (2020). Future of the human climate niche. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, May 117(21), 11350‒11355. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1910114117.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Zalasiewicz, J., Waters, C. N., Williams, M. & Summerhayes, C. (Eds.). (2019). The Anthropocene as a Geological Time Unit. A Guide to the Scientific Evidence and Current Debate. Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zetter, R. (2007). More labels, fewer refugees: remaking the refugee label in an era of globalization. Journal of Refugee Studies 23(2), 172‒192.CrossRefGoogle Scholar