The Emerging Global Consensus on Climate Change and Human Mobility 9781138097186, 9781315105031

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The Emerging Global Consensus on Climate Change and Human Mobility

This book examines whether a global consensus is emerging on climate change and human mobility and presents evidence of a slow-moving but dynamic, step-by-step process of international policy development on climaterelated mobility. Naser reviews the range of solutions offered to address climate-related mobility problems, such as extending the 1951 UN Refugee Convention, adopting an additional protocol to the UNFCCC or creating a new international treaty to support those facing climate-related migration and displacement problems. He examines the accumulating stock of international policies and initiatives relevant to climate-related mobility using a framework of six policy areas: human rights, refugees, climate change, disaster risk reduction, migration, and sustainable development. He uses this framework to define and summarise the main UN actions and milestones on climate-related mobility. Despite the difficult context affecting the global community of worsening climate change impacts and human rights under threat, Naser asserts that the foundations of global consensus on climate-related mobility have been built, particularly in the last decade. This book will be of great relevance to students, scholars and policymakers with an interest in the increasing interface between climate change and human mobility policy issues. Mostafa M Naser is Lecturer in the School of Business and Law at Edith Cowan University, Australia.

Routledge Focus on Environment and Sustainability

Jainism and Environmental Politics Aidan Rankin Australian Climate Policy and Diplomacy Government-Industry Discourses Ben L. Parr Reframing Energy Access Insights from The Gambia Anne Schiffer Climate and Energy Politics in Poland Debating Carbon Dioxide and Shale Gas Aleksandra Lis Sustainable Community Movement Organizations Solidarity Economies and Rhizomatic Practices Edited by Francesca Forno and Richard R. Weiner Climate Change Ethics for an Endangered World Thom Brooks The Emerging Global Consensus on Climate Change and Human Mobility Mostafa M Naser For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/ Routledge-Focus-on-Environment-and-Sustainability/book-series/RFES

The Emerging Global Consensus on Climate Change and Human Mobility

Mostafa M Naser

First published 2021 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2021 Mostafa M Naser The right of Mostafa M Naser to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN: 978-1-138-09718-6 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-10503-1 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by Apex CoVantage, LLC

Contents

List of figures List of boxes Preface List of acronyms and abbreviations 1 2 3 4

vi vii viii x

Climate change and human mobility: a conceptual framework

1

Climate change and human mobility: recognition and protection in international law

20

Emerging global consensus towards recognition and protection of climate change and human mobility

39

Concluding remarks

79

Index

91

Figures

1.1 Some key climate-related mobility variables 4.1 Emerging global consensus on climate-related mobility timeline 1: key milestones 2007–2012 4.2 Emerging global consensus on climate-related mobility timeline 2: key milestones 2013–2018

2 84 85

Boxes

3.1 Steps towards consensus: climate change 3.2 Steps towards consensus: disaster risk reduction and management 3.3 Steps towards consensus: human rights 3.4 Steps towards consensus: refugees 3.5 Steps towards consensus: migration 3.6 Steps towards consensus: sustainable development

52 55 57 59 62 63

Preface

These are troubled times for the global community. Conflicts persist, displacements increase, climate change impacts worsen and new deadly pandemics emerge. Institutions and processes that derive from post-Second World War consensus are challenged, and the very foundations of our human rights and international law system seem to be under threat. In such a context, this book, with a positive message on an emerging global consensus on climate-related mobility, may come as a surprise. I have been monitoring global policy developments on the international law aspects of climate-related mobility for over a decade. This short book seeks to summarise what I consider to be the positive steps the global community has taken in this field. Climate-related mobility is a fascinating field of study, not least because it is a multidisciplinary mix of varied subjects, such as law, politics and geography. This gives rise to inevitable terminological complications on issues such as mobility, displacement and relocation. I set out my justification for use of the term ‘climate-related mobility’ in Chapter 1. My research methodology for this book has been mainly desk-based, infused with valuable international work and networking with, among others, the Asian Society of International Law, the Environmental Nonmigration Network in Dresden, Germany, and the Earth System Governance Network in Lund, Sweden. My experience as a research consultant for the International Organization for Migration (IOM) in Papua New Guinea has also informed me in my research for this book. The basic message in this book is positive, but clearly more work is needed at all levels of government – supranational, national and local – to tackle the negative impacts of climate-related mobility. Beyond the scope of this book, the question remains as to whether the benefits of the emerging global consensus on climate-related mobility are trickling down to benefit communities and individuals outside the conference halls that host our international institutions.

Preface ix It is my pleasure to thank and pay tribute to those without whom this book would not exist. Firstly, I offer my sincerest appreciation to my principal supervisor, Professor M Rafiqul Islam, who was greatly helpful and offered invaluable assistance, support and guidance during my doctoral research on climate change and human mobility. Special thanks are due to Professor Maryam Omari, Executive Dean, and Associate Professor Joshua Aston, Associate Dean of Law, School of Business and Law, Edith Cowan University (ECU), who were an inspiration and provided enormous support during my personal journey of discovery. I would also like to take this opportunity to express my gratitude to my employer, Edith Cowan University, for providing me with technical and logistic support for this research work. In my daily work, I have been blessed with a friendly and cheerful group of fellow colleagues at ECU. Appreciation is also due to all my esteemed mentors from whom I received guidance and inspiration – Professor Jane McAdam (UNSW), Professor Ben Saul (USYD), Professor Antony T Anghie (Utah & NUS), Professor M Shahabuddin (Birmingham) and Associate Professor Mia M Rahim (UNE). Working on this book, I have received boundless support from my editor, Steve Pope, and I can only express my heartfelt gratitude for his invaluable assistance with this study and editing. I would also like to thank Annabelle Harris and Matthew Shobbrook of Routledge for their support and guidance throughout the journey. I wish to express my love and gratitude to my beloved family for their understanding and endless love during my studies. Lastly, and most importantly, I wish to thank my parents MS Doha Faruqi and Shafikara Faruqi for their prayers, best wishes and endless support. They bore me, raised me, supported me, taught me and loved me. I dedicate this book to my wife, Dr Tanzim Afroz, and my son, Nirbaan.

Acronyms and abbreviations

AR Assessment Report AWG-LCA Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-term Cooperative Action under the Convention CAF Cancún Adaptation Framework CAT Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment CCD Climate Change-induced Displacement COP Conference of Parties DRR Disaster Risk Reduction GCM Global Compact for Migration GCR Global Compact on Refugees IASC Inter-Agency Standing Committee Task Force on Climate Change ICCPR International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights ICESCR International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights IDMC Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre IDP Internally Displaced Person IFRC International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies ILO International Labour Organization INDCs Intended Nationally Determined Contributions IOM International Organization for Migration IPCC Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change LDC Least Developed Countries MECC Migration, Environment and Climate Change MICIC The Migrants in Countries in Crisis ODI Overseas Development Institute OHCHR Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights PA Paris Agreement

Acronyms and abbreviations xi PDD SDGs SIDS TFD UNCCD UNDP UNEP UNFCCC UNHCR UNHRC UNISDR WB WIM WMO

Platform on Disaster Displacement Sustainable Development Goals Small Island Developing States Task Force for Displacement United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification United Nations Development Programme UN Environment Programme UN Framework Convention on Climate Change United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees UN Human Rights Council UN International Strategy for Disaster Reduction World Bank Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage associated with Climate Change World Meteorological Organization

1

Climate change and human mobility A conceptual framework

Introduction Environmental change has always been a unique trigger for human mobility since time immemorial, although a range of other factors, such as the economy, nationality, religion, war, ethnic hatred and political turmoil, motivate people’s migration decisions.1 However, in the 21st century, accelerating environmental degradations, as a direct result of anthropogenic climate change, pose significant challenges to human mobility around the world. While natural climate variations have existed for millennia, the Industrial Revolution in the 18th and 19th centuries and the availability of cheap fossil fuels, especially after World War II, accelerated carbon emissions into the atmosphere exponentially. As a result, global warming, sea level rise and climate change now pose a combined threat to the modern human world. From the mid-20th century onwards, scientists have warned the global community about the staggering impacts of climate change. From its inception, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has continuously highlighted that climate change, which alters the atmosphere and the global environment through anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, is changing the physical environment in ways that make human populations more vulnerable to environmental stress.2 Currently there is a strong scientific consensus that ‘climate change is occurring’, and the causes of global warming and climate change are largely due to human activities.3 On the impacts of climate change on human mobility, the First Assessment Report (AR) had warned that one of the greatest effects of climate change may be on human migration.4 In the Fourth AR in 2007, the IPCC called humaninduced climate change ‘unequivocal’ and authoritatively established that it is accelerating the severe effects on the environment and the deterioration of living conditions in many parts of the world, resulting in significant stress on ecosystems, socio-economic systems and human welfare.5 In its Fifth AR, the IPCC reiterates that ‘[c]limate change is projected to increase displacement of people’6 and projects that in low-lying areas alone,

2 A conceptual framework ‘[w]ithout adaptation, hundreds of millions of people . . . will be displaced due to land loss by year 2100; the majority of those affected are from East, Southeast, and South Asia’.7 As Marine Franck, of the Advisory Group on Climate Change and Human Mobility, said at a COP21 press conference: ‘[c]limate-related displacement is not a future phenomenon. It is a reality; it is already a global concern’.8 The World Bank (WB) report published in 2018 predicts that around 143 million people could be forced to migrate internally within their own countries by 2050 because of deteriorating conditions of climate change.9 However, the extent and type of migration depend on multifarious factors. The Figure 1.1 illustrates some key climaterelated mobility variables.

Slow Cross border

Temporary

Voluntary

Forced

Internal

Permanent Rapid

Figure 1.1 Some key climate-related mobility variables Source: Mostafa Naser and Steve Pope Illustration summarises points made in: Zetter, Roger. Protecting environmentally displaced people. Developing the capacity of legal and normative frameworks. Oxford: Refugee Studies Centre (2011) and Kraler, Albert, Tatiana Cernei and Marion Noack. ‘Climate Refugees’, Legal and policy responses to environmentally induced migration. ICMPD, requested by the European Parliament’s Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (2011).

However, these predictions are often ‘contentious’ and challenged by ‘sceptic’ scholars on various grounds, including scientific uncertainty, methodological error, multi-causality of migration and so on.10 Irrespective of the accuracy of those forecasts, all the projections made by credible

A conceptual framework 3 scientific bodies and international organisations such as the IPCC, International Organization for Migration (IOM) and United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) indicate that the number of people displaced by climate change will not only outplace the number of traditional refugees, but it will more than triple between 2009 and 2030. The scope and extent of the problem are massive and expanding step-by-step.11 It is believed that, if urgent action is not taken soon, the issue will appear as a bigger humanitarian disaster than the current refugee crisis.12 This apparent conundrum highlights the importance of both international and national initiatives and actions. However, climate change and human mobility do not fit neatly into any academic or, more importantly, any government policy category. Rather, it is an amalgam of cross-cutting issues, some of which demand immediate and appropriate responses from both international and national authorities. Other issues may be long-term, slow-release problems, which, because of their gradual, incremental nature are missed or avoided by governments and other agencies. In the absence of a nationally and internationally recognised uniform definition13 and legal and moral recognition as a separate category requiring protection, climate-related mobility needs have, in the past, been largely unaddressed in legal and policy responses. While the rights of persons displaced by war, persecution or conflict are protected by a number of international, regional and national legal instruments, norms and covenants, no international framework has been developed to date for the protection of persons displaced for environmental reasons.14 Despite the predictions of significant displacements due to the effects of climate change, the formulation of legal frameworks and policy at national and international levels has been slow. This book examines whether progress is being made. Keeping this in context, the main aim of this book is to consider whether a global ‘consensus’ on climate change-related displacement and migration is emerging. We look at six policy areas defining the main UN actions on climate-related mobility: human rights; refugees; climate change; disaster risk reduction; migration; and sustainable development.

Climate change, environment and human mobility: a complex nexus There is growing scientific certainty on the increasing vulnerability and risks resulting from projected climate change, and widespread consensus that sea level rise, salinisation of coastal areas and hydro-meteorological natural catastrophes are climatic processes and events having significant implications on human lives and livelihoods around the world.15 However, some sceptics question whether climate-related migration and displacement really exist, basing their arguments on scientific uncertainty

4 A conceptual framework of the effects of climate change, multi-causality factors and other related issues; hence, they deny the appropriateness of the international community’s recognition of and responsibility for vulnerable people impacted by climate-related mobility issues. Some argue that a matrix of factors, including environmental, social, economic and political issues, encourages people to move and that it is difficult to segregate environmental causes from other factors.16 Although they admit that sudden or slow-onset changes in environmental conditions can be indirect factors in decisions to move, social processes that create poverty and marginality are more important factors than environmental changes per se.17 For some, environmental degradation resulting from climate change is one of the many triggering factors, and not even a significant one.18 Notwithstanding the fact that there are non-climatic migration factors to consider – migration is not necessarily going to occur for reasons of climatic events alone19 – environmental factors are increasingly recognised as an important component of people’s migration decisions.20 In some locales and communities, especially in rural areas, people remain exclusively dependent on natural resources for their sustenance.21 For these people, ecology is indistinguishable from economy,22 and they are often identified as among the most vulnerable to climate change impacts. The interrelationship between environment and livelihood is so intricate that the depletion of natural resources due to environmental degradation may play a contributing role in affecting human mobility due to direct and indirect results of loss of land, poverty, food deficiency, social inequity and personal insecurity. In this type of displacement, push factors relating to people’s homes are more important than pull factors such as social and economic conditions.23 Various studies, including IPCC reports, confirm that a profound connection exists between climate change and human mobility and that the numbers concerning climate-related migration and displacement will grow in magnitude due to the direct effects of climate change.24 The challenges may become too great unless these persons are recognised as a separate group for protection and unless targeted protection systems are developed to manage the increasing numbers of people internally and externally displaced because of climate change.

Climate change and human mobility: as a discrete area of study McLeman, questioning the legitimacy of climate change and human mobility as a discrete area of study, emphasises the need to think ‘beyond the speculative climate change refugee scenarios’.25 Clearly, as he asserts, ‘climate influences human migration’ and ‘climate has always had an influence

A conceptual framework 5 on human settlement and migration’. But, if we rest with his assertion that ‘there is presently no mechanism for recording the global number of climate-related migrants and the circumstances behind their movement, and it is unlikely one will be developed anytime soon’,26 we risk abandoning to their fate those that may be suffering from and threatened by the consequences of climate-related migration. Naser27 and the Brookings-LSE Project on Internal Displacement28 reminded us that the very first report of the IPCC from 199029 stated that the greatest single impact of climate change may be on human migration. The IPCC report supplied one of the first predictions on future climate change displacement numbers, estimating that by 2050, 150 million people could be displaced by desertification, water scarcity, floods, storms and other climate change-related disasters. Certainly, the multifarious, multi-causal nature of climate-related mobility presents difficulties in the gathering of relevant, useful, reliable statistics. As reported by the IOM in its Environmental Migration Newsletter,30 at the 2018 International Forum on Migration Statistics ‘Measuring the MigrationEnvironment Nexus: State of the Art’, François Gemenne (Director, Hugo Observatory, University of Liege, Belgium) called for more realistic, smaller-scale estimates of movements linked to environmental change and disasters, and Leal Kumar Dindoyal (Statistics Mauritius of the Republic of Mauritius) highlighted the problem of trying to use a ten-year census to measure internal mobility linked to environmental degradation. Improvements are being made in statistical and modelling methodologies in this field. The UN International Office for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR) reported in 2017 a ‘unique modelling exercise based on the latest data covering 204 countries and territories . . . (using) probabilistic risk models for sudden onset disasters’.31 Ultimately, regardless of any persistent methodological uncertainties, journalists and policy-makers are more likely to respond to large, headlinecatching numbers. The task for expert analysts and researchers is not to give up on climate-related displacement but to persist despite the conceptual difficulties. As the 2017 ODI-UNDP report states: [i]nternational processes, particularly those on migration and displacement, climate change and disaster risk reduction, increasingly refer to the links between climate change and human mobility. However, these links are not always grounded in evidence, and this increased attention has not led to the coordinated, significant policy or legislative change that is required. This report responds to these challenges.32 This book seeks to do the same. The ‘premises’, on which Professor Jane McAdam based her 2012 book,33 underpin the theoretical framework for this book that: climate change

6 A conceptual framework ‘magnifies existing vulnerabilities’; most climate change displacement is likely to be internal; international human rights law can contribute usefully to national legal and policy strategies; and that generalisations are to be avoided. Confirming these ‘premises’ from other sources: on climate change as a multiplier of existing vulnerabilities, Ezekiel Simperingham in Manou et al. (2017) states that ‘climate change will often act as an amplifier of existing vulnerabilities’.34 On the premise that most climate-related displacement is likely to be internal, the Brookings-LSE Project on Internal Displacement 2014 confirms that, ‘[i]t has long been recognized that the effects of climate change will displace people and that most of this displacement will be within national borders’.35 McAdam’s premise that international human rights law can contribute usefully to national legal and policy strategies is fundamental to this and many other books and initiatives in the climate-related displacement field. Delays in developing international human rights law helpful to climate-related mobility do not mean that human rights law cannot help this emerging new category of people. Despite the problems in conceptualising and measuring climate-related mobility, we should not be overwhelmed and discouraged from analysing it and preparing the intellectual and scientific foundations for future policymaking. Bettini, Nash and Gioli (2017) describe the positive evolution of the climate-related mobility debate in recent years: the focus on the figure of ‘climate refugees’ (tainted by environmental determinism and a crude understanding of human mobility) has given ground to a broader conception of the climate–migration nexus. In particular, the idea that migration can represent a legitimate adaptation strategy has emerged strongly.36 One justification for climate-related mobility as a priority area of study and policy-making comes from looking not at the conceptual uncertainties but at the harm, potential and actual, that climate-related mobility can inflict. As Simperingham (2017) states, ‘[i]t is difficult, if not impossible, to prove the causal link between climate change and an individual’s displacement’.37 But, if we shift the angle of the human rights lens and look not at individuals but at human rights systems, then the impact of climate-related mobility becomes much clearer. As Manou and Mihr state,38 ‘all human rights may be undermined as a result of the impacts of climate change’. As many others have also done (e.g. Naser (2012)),39 Manou and Mihr (2017) describe how: [s]uch civil, political, social, economic and cultural human rights include the right for all to live a dignified life, the right to self-determination

A conceptual framework 7 and participation of those most affected, the right to livelihoods which are threatened when livestock and farms vanish or are destroyed, the right to adequate housing, and the right to seek education and professional development if one is forced to migrate.40 International human rights in the climate-related mobility field may at times be inadequate and vulnerable, but they can have a positive role to play in tackling the negative consequences of climate-related migration and displacement. For those displaced by climate change within their own national borders, the UN Guiding Principles on IDPs apply; the key here is to enable effective implementation. For those displaced by climate change and moving across borders, there is in most cases (except rarely where the 1951 Refugee Convention terms might combine with a climate-related displacement issue)41 no current international framework. There is, in short, a protection gap. If any of the predictions on climate-related displacement numbers for the mid-21st century are correct, then this protection gap will impact on vastly increasing numbers of people.

Lack of widely recognised definition Although the numbers of people moving for environmental reasons are mounting rapidly, the question of proper characterisation and appropriate terminology to be applied to such persons is still unresolved.42 The available predictions of climate-related displacements vary widely because a broad range of definitions has been provided by migration experts and international organisations, and no internationally accepted definition exists to date for persons moving for climatic reasons.43 Partially, the debate on causation of issue contributes to not having a clear definition.44 A wide variety of terminology such as ‘environmental migration’, ‘climate change induced migration’, ‘ecological or environmental refugees’, ‘climate refugees’, ‘climate change migrants’, ‘environmentally induced forced migrants’ and ‘natural disaster displaced’ has been used in the existing literature by researchers to refer to persons fleeing environmental degradation, including climatic changes.45 While many scholars use the term ‘environmental/climate refugee’, it should be acknowledged here that use of the word ‘refugee’ in this ‘environmental/ climate’ term is highly contentious for several reasons. Firstly, the word ‘refugee’ has a specific meaning under the 1951 Refugee Convention, and so using it can create a misleading impression that the 1951 Convention has been extended to include people displaced across borders for environmental reasons.46 Also, international organisations, including UNHCR and IOM, have serious reservations against using the term ‘refugee’ to refer to people

8 A conceptual framework displaced for environmental/climatic reasons. Further, people from Small Island Developing States (SIDS) dislike being labelled as ‘refugees’, as it suggests victimhood and lack of resilience.47 The term ‘environmental refugee’ was first defined by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) researcher Essam El-Hinnawi in 1985 as: ‘those people who have been forced to leave their traditional habitat, temporarily or permanently, because of a marked environmental disruption (natural and/or triggered by people) that jeopardize their existence and/or seriously affected the quality of their life’.48 However, acknowledging the growing concern of the effects of climate change on human populations, academics and scholars such as Professor Frank Biermann and Ingrid Boas, and scholars Bonnie Docherty and Tyler Giannini from Harvard Law School,49 instead employed a different, more precise term, ‘climate refugee’, to identify people who move for climatic reasons, such as rising sea levels, melting glaciers, floods, cyclones and scarcity of water resources. Biermann and Boas argued that the broad definitions of environmental refugee given to date had failed to ‘specify or quantify climate-related migration’.50 Rather than broadly addressing environmental migration as most definitions do, the definitions of climate refugee provided by Docherty and Giannini, and Biermann and Boas, were tailored to climate change and included only the environmental events as triggering factors for human movement that were ‘consistent with climate change’ and that encompassed all those who flee the direct effects of climate change.51 Some scholars, taking into consideration the legal concern regarding the term ‘refugee’ as argued by agencies such as IOM and UNHCR, prefer the terms ‘environmental migrants’, ‘environmentally displaced persons’ or ‘climate change migrants’ rather than ‘environmental refugee’ or ‘climate refugee’. For example, by avoiding the term ‘refugee’, the IOM provided a definition of ‘climate change migrants’ in its Migration Research Series No. 33 (2008): persons or groups of persons who, predominantly for reasons of sudden or progressive changes in the environment as a result of climate change that adversely affect their lives or living conditions, are obliged to leave their homes or choose to do so, either temporarily or permanently, and who move either within their country or abroad.52 Gemenne and Brücker use the term ‘environmental displacement’ when referring to those whose migration is forced, and ‘environmental migration’ when referring to a larger category, encompassing both forced and voluntary movements.53 Martin (2017) uses the term ‘mobility’ to include three different forms of movement: ‘migration’, ‘displacement’ and ‘planned relocation’ recognised

A conceptual framework 9 in the Paris Agreement (PA).54 Further, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in its COPs, particularly between 2010 and 2019, frequently used the term ‘displacement, migration, and planned relocation’ in the context of climate change without overtly explaining ‘what categories of movement’ are included within the terms.55 Acknowledging the fact that no uniform and universally agreed definition exists to date, this book frequently refers to the terms ‘climate-related migration/displacement’ and ‘climate-related human mobility’ to denote all types of human movement motivated or caused by the direct effects of climate change without implying a specific meaning to the words ‘migration’, ‘displacement’ and ‘human mobility’. Thus, it is apparent that disagreements surround the conceptualisation of climate-related human movements.56 Warner identified two substantial points that are primarily responsible for not establishing clear definitions of concepts and terms related to climate-related displacement.57 Firstly, the conceptualisation of the issue is made complex by the inherent difficulties in segregating environmental factors from other migration drivers.58 Secondly, defining climate change displacement obligates the international community to adopt appropriate institutional and governance measures to address the problem.59 The international community, and in particular developed countries, have yet to reach a consensus on recognising this category of people. They have strong reservations against ‘environmental migrants’ because they fear it would prompt large numbers of migrants to move from developing and least developed countries (LDC) countries to developed countries in the guise of being ‘environmental refugees’.60 Ferris and Bergmann summarised the points: Facing this complexity and the sensitivity of the topic, it is unsurprising that no terminological consensus on the issue has yet emerged. We are left with the bulky and inelegant phrase ‘those displaced in the context of climate change’, which does not make a judgement about whether the effects of climate change are the single driving reason for movement or interact with other factors to lead individuals to decide to move.61

Is there an emerging global consensus on climate change and human mobility? As climate change emerged as an issue of public and political concern and academic analysis in the second half of the 20th century, researchers and policy-makers focused initially on the ecological and economic consequences of climate change. The human dimensions of climate change – more specifically, the effects of climate change on population displacement – were

10 A conceptual framework neglected by migration experts and policy-makers.62 After the publication of the first IPCC AR in 1990 and through the 1990s,63 the human and social dimensions of climate change garnered some increased focus, albeit at a slow pace. Melde, Laczko and Gemenne (2017) summarised the situation: ‘Climate change and migration are among the most pressing policy issues of our time. The international community has been slow, however, to recognise the many ways in which the two phenomena are interrelated’.64 Confusion surrounded (and continues to surround) whether climate-related movement is ‘a refugee issue, a human rights issue, an environmental issue, a security issue, a migration issue or a humanitarian issue’.65 The multifarious nature of climate-related mobility demands, where possible, is a multidisciplinary perspective, and therefore it can evoke multiple separate realms of international law. On the human rights front, the first key international institutional developments on human rights and climate-related mobility occurred in the late 2000s. In 2008, the UN Human Rights Council initiated the United Nations Human Rights Council Resolution 7/23 on ‘Human Rights and Climate Change’. This was the first official UN Resolution adopted by consensus that explicitly stated that climate change ‘poses an immediate and far-reaching threat to people and communities around the world and has implications for the full enjoyment of human rights’.66 The Resolution asked the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) to prepare a study on these implications ahead of a full Human Rights Council debate on the subject in March 2009. The Resolution further required the study and a summary of the Council debate to be sent to States Parties to the UNFCCC ahead of COP15 in Copenhagen to inform negotiations. In March 2009, the Human Rights Council adopted Resolution 10/4,67 which noted the effects of climate change on the enjoyment of human rights and reaffirmed the potential of human rights obligations and commitments to inform and strengthen international and national policy-making. In that Resolution, the Council announced its decision to hold a panel discussion on the relationship between climate change and human rights, welcomed the exchange of information between the OHCHR and the UNFCCC Secretariat and encouraged the High Commissioner to participate in the 15th UNFCCC Conference of the Parties. And yet, despite these positive pronouncements, progress was slow. On the climate change front, Walter Kälin stated in 2011 that, while mitigation and adaptation are on the agenda of the regular conferences of States Parties to the UNFCCC, the protection dimension and, with it, displacement triggered by the effects of climate change have been largely neglected in international discussions thus far.68

A conceptual framework 11 This has now changed. The first key question this book will address is the significance of this change; is a global consensus on climate-related migration, displacement and human mobility emerging? The book uses the phrase ‘emerging global consensus’ on climate-related human mobility with certain important qualifications. Firstly, if there is an emerging global consensus, it is a consensus building on more than just the international level. Rather it is the stock of law, policies, programmes and initiatives accumulating internationally, nationally and locally. Some parts of this stock may not even be labelled as climaterelated human mobility initiatives. Secondly, it is important to adopt a reasonably long-term perspective on climate-related human mobility and on the possibility of an emerging global consensus. Climate is distinct from weather; the former is long-term; the latter is short-term. Climate-related human mobility merits a similar longterm perspective. We need to look at the possibility of an emerging global consensus in terms of evolution over the long term, not seeking to weigh the pros and cons of one international initiative versus another, rather to identify key factors that persist over time. A third qualification to consider when examining whether a global consensus is emerging is the degree to which the distinct worlds of ‘climate change’ and ‘human rights’ are working together, what Mihr (2017) describes as ‘two global regimes . . . (that) are especially difficult to reconcile’.69 If there is evidence that two parallel universes have begun to converge on climate-related mobility issues, then it is reasonable to describe this as an emerging global consensus on climate-related mobility. Compared to where we were in 1990 at the time of publication of the First IPCC Assessment Report, we have come a long way as a global community on climate change and its consequences. We will review further in subsequent chapters whether progress has been sufficient to confirm there is an emerging global consensus on climate change displacement.

Notes 1 See Arthur H Westing, ‘Environmental Refugees: A Growing Category of Displaced Persons’ (1992) 19 Environmental Conservation 201; Dana Zartner Falstrom, ‘Stemming the Flow of Environmental Displacement: Creating a Convention to Protect Persons and Preserve the Environment’ (2001) 1 Colorado Journal of International Law and Policy 3; Frank Laczko and Christine Aghazarm, Migration, Environment and Climate Change: Assessing the Evidence (IOM, 2009) 13. 2 See IPCC, Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis, Summary for Policy Makers, Contribution of Working Group II to the Fourth Assessment Report of the IPCC (hereinafter IPCC, Summary for Policy Makers).

12 A conceptual framework 3 NASA, Scientific Consensus: Earth’s Climate is Warming, NASA – Global Climate Change- Vital Signs of the Planet, 4 IPCC, ‘The IPCC Impacts Assessment’ Report prepared for IPCC by Working Group II (IPCC, 1990) 2–22. 5 IPCC, ‘Summary for Policymakers (WG-I)’, (n 2) 9. 6 Leo Meyer et al., ‘Climate Change 2014: Synthesis Report – Summary for Policy Makers. Contribution of Working Groups I, II and III to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’ (Synthesis Report, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2014) 16. 7 Poh Poh Wong et al., ‘Coastal Systems and Low-Lying Areas’ in Christopher B. Field et al. (eds), Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability (IPCC, 2014) 364. 8 Cited in Kristin Lambert, ‘The Paris Agreement: Spotlight on Climate Migrants’ Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies (F&ES Blog, 2015) 9 World Bank Group, Groundswell – Preparing for Internal Climate Migration, report prepared by Kanta Kumari Rigaud et al., (World Bank Group, 2018) 110. 10 Satvindar Nagra, ‘The Oslo Principles and Climate Change Displacement: Missed Opportunity or Misplaced Expectations?’ (2017) 2 Carbon & Climate Law Review (CCLR) 126. 11 Ibid. 12 IOM, Climate Change and Migration in Vulnerable Countries: A Snapshot of Least Developed Countries, Landlocked Developing Countries and Small Island Developing States (IOM, 2019) 2. 13 Andrew Geddes et al., ‘The Implications for Governance of Migration Linked to Environmental Change: Key Findings and New Research Directions’ (2012) 30 Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy 1078–1082. 14 Roger Zetter, ‘Legal and Normative Framework’ (2008) 31 Forced Migration Review 62. 15 See IPCC, Climate Change 2014: Synthesis Report. Contribution of Working Groups I, II and III to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Core Writing Team, R.K. Pachauri and L.A. Meyer (eds)] (IPCC, 2015). 16 For example, Frank Laczko and Christine Aghazarm, Migration, Environment and Climate Change: Assessing the Evidence (IOM, 2009) 17. 17 Jon Barnett and Natasha Chamberlain, ‘Migration as Climate Change Adaptation: Implications for the Pacific’ in Bruce Burson (ed.), Climate Change and Migration South Pacific Perspective (Institute of Policy Studies, 2010) 51. 18 See Richard Black, Environmental Refugees: Myth or Reality? (Working Paper No. 34, UNHCR, 2001) 12–14; Stephen Castles, Environmental Change and Forced Migration: Making Sense of the Debate (Working Paper No. 70, UNHCR, 2002) 2–3. 19 Thomas Hummitzsch, Climate Change and Migration: The Debate on Causality and the Legal Position of Affected Persons (Policy Brief No. 15, Focus Migration, 2009) 3. 20 See Susan F. Martin et al., Climate Change, Internal Displacement and Development: Submission to the UN High Panel on Internal Displacement, United

A conceptual framework 13

21 22 23

24

25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32

33 34

35 36 37

Nations (May, 2020) Robert Stojanov, ‘Environmental Migration – How Can be Estimated and Predicted’ in T. Siwek (ed.), Globalization and its Impact to Society, Region and States, University of Ostrava, Ostrava, 302–311. Norman Myers, ‘Environmental Refugees in a Globally Warmed World’ (1993) 43(11) BioScience 752. Susana B. Adamo, Addressing Environmentally Induced Population Displacements: A Delicate Task (Background Paper for the Population – Environment Research Network Cyberseminar on ‘Environmentally Induced Population Displacements’, 2008) 14. See Grame Hugo et al., Climate Change and Migration in Asia and the Pacific (ADB, 2011).; UNHCR, ‘Human Mobility in the Context of the Climate Change UNFCCC-Paris-COP21’ (UNHCR, 2015) Robert A. McLeman, Climate and Human Migration: Past Experiences, Future Challenges (Cambridge University Press, 2014) Preface, 1, 9 and 14. Ibid. Mostafa Mahmud Naser, ‘Climate Change, Environmental Degradation, and Migration: A Complex Nexus’ (2012) 36 William & Mary Environmental Law and Policy Review 713. Brookings-LSE, Climate Change and Internal Displacement (Brookings Institution, 2014) 1. IPCC, Climate Change: The IPCC 1990 and 1992 Assessments (IPCC, 1992) 103. International Organization for Migration (IOM), Environmental Migration Newsletter (January 2018) accessed 5 March 2018. UNISDR, ‘Sudden Onset Disasters to Make 14 Million People Homeless Every Year’ 2017/15 (13 October 2017) Reliefweb Opitz Stapleton et al., Climate Change, Migration and Displacement: The Need for a Risk-informed and Coherent Approach (Overseas Development Institute and United Nations Development Programme, 2017) and Summary of webinar Jane McAdam, Climate Change: Forced Migration and International Law (Oxford University Press, 2012) 5. Ezekiel Simperingham, ‘State Responsibility to Prevent Climate Displacement: The Importance of Housing, Land and Property Rights’ in Dimitra Manou et al. (eds), Climate Change, Migration and Human Rights: Law and Policy Perspectives (Routledge, 2017) 95. Brookings-LSE, (n 28) 1. Giovanni Bettini, Sarah Louise Nash and Giovanna Gioli, ‘One Step Forward, Two Steps Back? The Fading Contours of (In)justice in Competing Discourses on Climate Migration’ (2017) 183 The Geographic Journal 348. Simperingham, (n 34).

14 A conceptual framework 38 Dimitra Manou and Anja Mihr, ‘Climate Change, Migration and Human Rights’ in Dimitra Manou et al. (eds), Climate Change, Migration and Human Rights: Law and Policy Perspectives (Routledge, 2017) 4. 39 Mostafa M Naser, ‘Climate Change and Forced Displacement: Obligation of States under International Human Rights Law’ (2012) 22 (2) Sri Lanka Journal of International Law 117–164. 40 Manou and Mihr, (n 38) 4. 41 Susan F Martin, ‘Environmental Change and Migration: Legal and Political Frameworks’ (2012) 30(6) Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy 1045–1060. 42 Xing-Yin Ni, ‘A Nation Going Under: Legal Protection for Climate Change Refugees’ (2015) 38 Boston College International and Comparative Law Review 329, 344. 43 Koko Warner, ‘Global Environmental Change and Migration: Governance Challenges’ (2010) 20 Global Environmental Change 402, 403. 44 Phillip Dane Warren, ‘Forced Migration After Paris COP21: Evaluating the “Climate Change Displacement Coordination Facility”’ (2016) 116 (8) Columbia Law Review 2103, 2110. 45 Susan F. Martin, ‘Environmental Change and Human Mobility: Trends, Law and Policy’ (2017) 42 Comparative Population Studies 187, 204. Etienne Piguet, ‘Climate Change and Forced Migration’ (UNHCR, 2008) 4. 46 Nagra, (n 10) 127. 47 Ibid. 48 Essam El-Hinnawi, Environmental Refugees (UNEP, 1985) 4. 49 Bonnie Docherty and Tyler Giannini, ‘Confronting a Rising Tide: A Proposal for a Convention on Climate Change Refugees’ (2009) 33 Harvard Environmental Law Review, 349, 367; Frank Biermann and Ingrid Boas, ‘Preparing for a Warmer World: Towards a Global Governance System to Protect Climate Refugees’ (2010) 10(1) Global Environmental Politics 61, 62–63. 50 Biermann and Boas, (n 49) 62. 51 Biermann and Boas, (n 49) 67; Docherty and Giannini, (n 48) 370. 52 IOM, Migration, Climate Change and the Environment (IOM Policy Brief, IOM, 2009) 7. 53 François Gemenne and Pauline Brücker, ‘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’ (2015) 27(2) International Journal of Refugee Law 245, 254. 54 Martin, (n 45) 188. 55 Lauren Nishimura, ‘“Climate Change Migrants”: Impediments to a Protection Framework and the Need to Incorporate Migration into Climate Change Adaptation Strategies’ (2015) 27 (1) International Journal of Refugee Law 1, 5. 56 Warner, (n 43) 403. 57 Ibid. 58 Ibid. 59 Ibid. 60 Angela Williams, ‘Turning the Tide: Recognizing Climate Change Refugees in International Law’ (2008) 30(4) Law & Policy 502, 510. 61 Elizabeth Ferris and Jonas Bergmann, ‘Soft Law, Migration and Climate Change Governance’ (2017) 8(1) Journal of Human Rights and the Environment 6, 9.

A conceptual framework 15 62 Laczko, Frank and Christine Aghazarm. ‘Introduction and Overview: Enhancing the Knowledge Base’ in Frank Laczko and Christine Aghazarm (eds), Migration, Environment and Climate Change: Assessing the Evidence (IOM, 2009) 14. 63 Maria Stavropoulou, ‘The Right Not to be Displaced’ (1994) 9 The American University Journal of International Law & Policy 689; John Von Doussa QC, Allison Corkery and Renee Chartres. ‘Human Rights and Climate Change, Background Paper, Human Rights: Everyone, Everywhere, Everyday’ Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC Sydney) (2008) 1; Sara Aminzadeh. ‘A Moral Imperative: The Human Rights Implications of Climate Change’ (2007) 30 Hastings International and Comparative Law Journal 231. 64 Susanne Melde, Frank Laczko and François Gemenne (eds), Making Mobility Work for Adaptation to Environmental Changes’ (IOM, 2017) iii. 65 Jane McAdam, ‘How to Address the Protection Gaps – Ways Forward’ Paper presented at the Nansen Conference on ‘Climate Change and Displacement in the 21st Century’, Oslo, Norway, (5–7 June 2011) 1, . 66 UN Human Rights Council, Human Rights and Climate Change, Res. 7/23, 7th Sess., UN Doc. A/HRC/7/78, 14 July 2008. 67 UN Human Rights Council, Draft Report of the Human Rights Council, Res. 10/4, 10 Sess., UN Doc. A/HRC/10/L.11 (31 March 2009). 68 Walter Kälin, ‘Climate Change Induced Displacement – A Challenge for International Law’ Distinguished Lecture Series 3, Mahanirban Calcutta Research Group (MCRG), (2011) 9. 69 Anja Mihr, ‘Climate Justice, Migration and Human Rights’ in Dimitra Manou et al. (eds), Climate Change, Migration and Human Rights: Law and Policy Perspectives (Routledge, 2017) 56.

Bibliography Adamo, S B 2008, ‘Addressing Environmentally Induced Population Displacements: A Delicate Task’ Background Paper for the Population – Environment Research Network Cyberseminar on ‘Environmentally Induced Population Displacements’, pp. 1–20. Aminzadeh, S 2007, ‘A Moral Imperative: The Human Rights Implications of Climate Change’ Hastings International and Comparative Law Journal, vol. 30, pp. 231–266. Barnett, J & Chamberlain, N 2010, ‘Migration as Climate Change Adaptation: Implications for the Pacific’ in Bruce Burson (ed), Climate Change and Migration South Pacific Perspective, Institute of Policy Studies, Wellington. Bettini, G, Nash, S L & Gioli, G 2017, ‘One Step Forward, Two Steps Back? The Fading Contours of (in)justice in Competing Discourses on Climate Migration’ The Geographic Journal, vol. 183, pp. 348–358. Biermann, F & Boas, I 2010, ‘Preparing for a Warmer World: Towards a Global Governance System to Protect Climate Refugees’ Global Environmental Politics, vol. 10, no. 1, pp. 60–88. Black, R 2001, ‘Environmental Refugees: Myth or Reality?’ New Issues in Refugee Research – UNHCR, Working Paper No. 34, pp. 1–20.

16 A conceptual framework Brookings-LSE 2014, Climate Change and Internal Displacement, Brookings Institution, viewed 23 June 2020, www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/ Climate-Change-and-Internal-Displacement-October-10-2014.pdf Castles, S 2002, ‘Environmental Change and Forced Migration: Making Sense of the Debate’ New Issues in Refugee Research – UNHCR, Working Paper No. 70, pp. 1–16. Docherty, B & Giannini, T 2009, ‘Confronting a Rising Tide: A Proposal for a Convention on Climate Change Refugees’ Harvard Environmental Law Review, vol. 33, pp. 349–404. Doussa, J V, Corkery, A & Chartres, R 2008, ‘Human Rights and Climate Change, Background Paper, Human Rights: Everyone, Everywhere, Everyday’ Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC Sydney). El-Hinnawi, E 1985, Environmental Refugees, UNEP, Nairobi. Falstrom, D Z 2001, ‘Stemming the Flow of Environmental Displacement: Creating a Convention to Protect Persons and Preserve the Environment’ Colorado Journal of International Law and Policy, vol. 1, pp. 1–30. Ferris, E & Bergmann, J 2017, ‘Soft Law, Migration and Climate Change Governance’ Journal of Human Rights and the Environment, vol. 8, no. 1, pp. 6–29. Geddes, A et al. 2012, ‘The Implications for Governance of Migration Linked to Environmental Change: Key Findings and New Research Directions’ Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy, vol. 30, pp 1078–1082. 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, vol. 27, no. 2, pp. 245–263. Hugo, G et al. 2011, Climate Change and Migration in Asia and the Pacific, ADB, Manilla. Hummitzsch, T 2009, ‘Climate Change and Migration: The Debate on Causality and the Legal Position of Affected Persons’ Focus Migration, Policy Brief No. 15, pp. 1–9. IOM 2009, Migration, Climate Change and the Environment, IOM Policy Brief, IOM, Geneva. IOM 2018, Environmental Migration Newsletter, IOM, Geneva, viewed 23 June 2020, https://mailchi.mp/b2e33d556c1e/iom-environmental-migration-newsletterjan-2018 IOM 2019, Climate Change and Migration in Vulnerable Countries: A Snapshot of Least Developed Countries, Landlocked Developing Countries and Small Island Developing States, IOM, Geneva. IPCC 1990, ‘The IPCC Impacts Assessment’ Report prepared for IPCC by Working Group II¸ IPCC, Geneva. IPCC 1992, Climate Change: The IPCC 1990 and 1992 Assessments, IPCC, Geneva, viewed 12 January 2020, www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/05/ipcc_90_92_ assessments_far_full_report.pdf IPCC 2007, Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis, Summary for Policy Makers, Contribution of Working Group II to the Fourth Assessment Report of the IPCC, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.

A conceptual framework 17 IPCC 2015, Climate Change 2014: Synthesis Report. Contribution of Working Groups I, II and III to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, report prepared by R.K. Pachauri and L.A. Meyer, IPCC, Geneva. Kälin, W 2011, ‘Climate Change Induced Displacement – A Challenge for International Law’ Distinguished Lecture Series 3, Mahanirban Calcutta Research Group (MCRG), Kolkata. Laczko, F & Aghazarm, C 2009, Migration, Environment and Climate Change: Assessing the Evidence, IOM, Geneva. Laczko, F & Aghazarm, C 2009, ‘Introduction and Overview: Enhancing the Knowledge Base’ in Frank Laczko and Christine Aghazarm (eds), Migration, Environment and Climate Change: Assessing the Evidence, IOM, Geneva. Lambert, K 2015, ‘The Paris Agreement: Spotlight on Climate Migrants’ Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies (F&ES Blog, 2015), https://environment. yale.edu/blog/2015/12/the-paris-agreement-spotlight-on-climate-migrants/ Manou, D & Mihr, A 2017, ‘Climate Change, Migration and Human Rights’ in Dimitra Manou et al. (eds), Climate Change, Migration and Human Rights: Law and Policy Perspectives, Routledge, London, UK. Martin, S F 2008, ‘Environmental Change and Human Mobility: Trends, Law and Policy’ Comparative Population Studies, vol. 42, pp. 187–217. Martin, S F 2012, ‘Environmental Change and Migration: Legal and Political Frameworks’ Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy, vol. 30, no. 6, pp. 1045–1060. Martin, S F et al. 2020, Climate Change, Internal Displacement and Development: Submission to the UN High Panel on Internal Displacement, United Nations, viewed 23 June 2020, www.un.org/internal-displacement-panel/sites/www.un.org. internal-displacement-panel/files/published_knomad_submission.pdf McAdam, J 2011, ‘How to Address the Protection Gaps – Ways Forward’ Paper presented at the Nansen Conference on ‘Climate Change and Displacement in the 21st Century’, Oslo, Norway, 5–7 June 2011. McAdam, J 2012, Climate Change: Forced Migration and International Law, Oxford University Press, Oxford. McLeman, R A 2014, Climate and Human Migration: Past Experiences, Future Challenges, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK. Melde, S, Laczko, F & Gemenne, F (eds) 2017, Making Mobility Work for Adaptation to Environmental Changes, IOM, Geneva. Meyer, L et al. 2014, Climate Change 2014: Synthesis Report – Summary for Policy Makers. Contribution of Working Groups I, II and III to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Synthesis Report, IPCC, Geneva. Mihr, A 2017, ‘Climate Justice, Migration and Human Rights’ in Dimitra Manou et al. (eds), Climate Change, Migration and Human Rights: Law and Policy Perspectives, Routledge, UK. Myers, N 1993, ‘Environmental Refugees in a Globally Warmed World’ BioScience, vol. 43, no. 11, pp. 752–761. Nagra, S 2017, ‘The Oslo Principles and Climate Change Displacement: Missed Opportunity or Misplaced Expectations?’ Carbon & Climate Law Review (CCLR), vol. 2, pp. 120–135.

18 A conceptual framework NASA, Scientific Consensus: Earth’s Climate is Warming, NASA – Global Climate Change- Vital Signs of the Planet, https://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus/ Naser, M M 2012, ‘Climate Change, Environmental Degradation, and Migration: A Complex Nexus’ William & Mary Environmental Law and Policy Review, vol. 36, 713–768. Naser, M M 2012, ‘Climate Change and Forced Displacement: Obligation of States under International Human Rights Law’ Sri Lanka Journal of International Law, vol. 22, no. 2, pp. 117–164. Ni, X 2015, ‘A Nation Going Under: Legal Protection for Climate Change Refugees’ Boston College International and Comparative Law Review, vol. 38, pp. 329–366. Nishimura, L 2015, ‘Climate Change Migrants: Impediments to a Protection Framework and the Need to Incorporate Migration into Climate Change Adaptation Strategies’ International Journal of Refugee Law, vol. 27, no. 1, pp. 107–134. Piguet, E 2008, ‘Climate Change and Forced Migration’ New Issues in Refugee Research – UNHCR, Working Paper No. 153, pp. 1–13. Simperingham, E 2017, ‘State Responsibility to Prevent Climate Displacement: The Importance of Housing, Land and Property Rights’ in Dimitra Manou et al. (eds), Climate Change, Migration and Human Rights: Law and Policy Perspectives, Routledge, London, UK. Stapleton, O et al. 2017, Climate Change, Migration and Displacement: The Need for a Risk-informed and Coherent Approach, Overseas Development Institute, viewed 23 June 2020 www.odi.org/sites/odi.org.uk/files/resource-documents/ 11874.pdf Stavropoulou, M 1994, ‘The Right Not to be Displaced’ The American University Journal of International Law & Policy, vol. 9, pp. 689–750. Stojanov, R 2006, ‘Environmental Migration – How Can be Estimated and Predicted’ in Siwek, T. (ed), Globalization and its Impact to Society, Region and States, University of Ostrava, Ostrava, Czech Republic. UNHCR 2015, ‘Human Mobility in the Context of the Climate Change UNFCCCParis-COP21’ UNHCR, viewed 23 June 2020 UN Human Rights Council, Draft Report of the Human Rights Council, Res. 10/4, 10 Sess., UN Doc. A/HRC/10/L.11, 31 March 2009. UN Human Rights Council, Human Rights and Climate Change, Res. 7/23, 7th Sess., UN Doc. A/HRC/7/78, 14 July 2008. UNISDR 2017, ‘Sudden Onset Disasters to Make 14 Million People Homeless Every Year’ Reliefweb, viewed 23 June 2020, www.internal-displacement.org/ assets/Uploads/Global-Risk-Report-IDMC-press-release-final-12.10.2017.pdf Warner, W 2010, ‘Global Environmental Change and Migration: Governance Challenges’ Global Environmental Change, vol. 20, pp. 402–413. Warren, P D 2016, ‘Forced Migration After Paris COP21: Evaluating the “Climate Change Displacement Coordination Facility”’ Columbia Law Review, vol. 116, no. 8, pp. 2103–2144.

A conceptual framework 19 Westing, A H 1992, ‘Environmental Refugees: A Growing Category of Displaced Persons’ Environmental Conservation, vol. 19, pp. 201–207. Williams, A 2008, ‘Turning the Tide: Recognizing Climate Change Refugees in International Law’ Law & Policy, vol. 30, no. 4, pp. 502–529. Wong, P et al. 2014, ‘Coastal Systems and Low-Lying Areas’ in Christopher B. Field et al. (eds), Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability, IPCC, Geneva. World Bank Group 2018, Groundswell – Preparing for Internal Climate Migration, report prepared by Kanta Kumari Rigaud, Alex de Sherbinin, Bryan Jones, Jonas Bergmann, Viviane Clement, Kayly Ober, Jacob Schewe, Susana Adamo, Brent McCusker, Silke Heuser, and Amelia Midgley, World Bank Group, Washington. Zetter, R 2008, ‘Legal and Normative Framework’ Forced Migration Review, vol. 31, pp. 62–63.

2

Climate change and human mobility Recognition and protection in international law

Introduction Chapter 1 demonstrates that there is considerable debate about the influence of environmental/climate change on human mobility and whether migrants moving for environmental or climate change reasons can be considered a ‘legally distinct group’.1 Further, there is diverse opinion in academic literature on best policy responses to climate-related mobility.2 Much has been written since 1990 on the particular issue of possible legal remedies under international law for people likely to be displaced by climate change.3 Global leaders have long been urged to create an ‘effective and appropriate international response’ given the global nature of climate change.4 A majority of scholars have recognised that the current international framework, including refugee law, migration law, international mechanisms for disaster management and climate change, is not feasible to provide effective protection to people displaced because of climate change events.5 Over the past decade, academics have proposed a range of solutions on climate-related mobility policy problems,6 often with multi-faceted, global governance approaches,7 mostly suggesting ‘some form of an international agreement or framework’.8 Views differ on the viability of protection regimes for climate-related mobility.9 While some find solutions within the existing legal framework, such as by extending the 1951 Refugee Convention and adopting an additional protocol to the UNFCCC,10 others prefer creating a new treaty for the protection of climate-related migrants and displaced persons.11 However, the idea of an independent treaty is starkly opposed by some as it will not provide ‘an adequate solution’ to the problem.12 This chapter analyses key policy proposals and debates concerning the recognition and protection of persons impacted by climate-related mobility. Chapter 3 examines in detail how international agencies and other organisations have developed their approaches to climate-related mobility.

Protection in international law 21

Growing advocacy for recognition of climate-related migrants as a distinct category requiring protection Currently, numerous national, regional and international mechanisms, agreements, guiding principles, norms and institutions such as the 1951 Refugee Convention, the Guiding Principles on IDPs, international humanitarian law, human rights and customary law deal with human migration.13 However, the current international legal regime, except for a few regional and soft-law instruments, disregards the correlation between environmental degradation and human mobility.14 These persons are, therefore, not yet ‘recognised in international law as an identifiable group whose rights are expressly articulated, or as a formal legal category of people in need of special protection’.15 However, academics and practitioners have developed a number of proposals for recognition and protection of people displaced by climate change.16 Extending protection within international refugee law The 1951 Refugee Convention has in the course of time become a universal tool for the protection of refugees all over the world.17 Nonetheless, the Convention offers only a restrictive definition of refugee that does not cover all those in need of its protection. Although persons displaced for environmental reasons are often referred to as ‘environmental refugees’ or, more specifically, ‘climate refugees’, the Convention and its Protocol are not adequately equipped to protect these individuals.18 They are outside protection ‘both in terms of the text and intent of the drafters, and in terms of much current practice’19 and do not meet the legal requirements of the ‘refugee’ definition in the Convention.20 However, Cooper (1998) has argued that environmentally displaced persons are implicitly included under the Convention’s refugee definition and thus can avail themselves of its protection.21 Therefore, it is useful to explore whether people who are displaced for environmental reasons can get protection under the Refugee Convention. The definition of ‘refugee’ in the Refugee Convention, which is the yardstick for granting a refugee status, consists of four elements. Firstly, the refugee must have a well-founded fear of persecution arising out of certain political reasons. Rising sea levels, salination, drought and increasingly frequent storms and floods may be harmful, and persons likely to be affected by those effects of climate change may be fearful, but they do not constitute ‘persecution’ in accordance with the meaning it has been ascribed in international refugee law. Pointing to discriminatory actions

22

Protection in international law

disadvantaged groups may suffer during natural disasters, Cooper argues that environmental or climate ‘refugees’ are covered within the purview of the Convention refugee definition.22 However, this argument seems too simplistic. In order to be recognised as a ‘refugee’ on grounds of governmental persecution, the victim of environmental or climate change must demonstrate that the environmental degradation is caused by governmental actions having ‘both the persecutory impact and persecutory intent’ targeting a ‘particular social group’, which is impossible to prove.23 In many situations concerning climate-related cross-border migration, governments may cause harm not by being active ‘persecutors’ but rather by being inactive, by simply being unable to offer any assistance to their citizens. In most cases, climate-related migrants will not fulfil the criterion of ‘wellfounded fear of persecution’ because of the difficulty in characterising climate change itself as ‘persecution’. However, if the displacement leads to serious conflicts that may erupt in the wake of environmental scarcity, then governments may be responsible for such ‘persecution’ and discriminatory acts, then giving rise to these persons being eligible for protection under international refugee law.24 Secondly, refugee law is based on the fundamental principle that a person needs legal protection because they are outside of their country of origin due to persecution by a government actor or an actor the government cannot control. So one must be outside the country of origin to be determined as a refugee. There are no exceptions to this principle, and current refugee law does not encompass situations of internal displacement. It is confirmed in many studies that most climate-related displaced persons will be internally displaced, moved from their home but remaining within their own national borders; only a few with sufficient money, education and networks may cross international borders. Thus, the vast majority of people who have not yet moved but are facing habitat destruction, or those who are internally displaced due to climate-related impacts, fall outside the remit of the Refugee Convention.25 Thirdly, a refugee is always someone who does not have the protection of his or her country. The definition in the Convention is premised on the notion that the government itself is the cause of refugee displacement, and it has failed in its responsibilities towards citizens. But this is not necessarily the case for people displaced by climate change in affected countries such as Tuvalu, Maldives and Bangladesh, who may rely on the protection of their national government. Governments may be sincere in their wish to act benevolently yet be completely powerless to prevent the effects of changing climate.26 The clear implication from the aforementioned analysis is that someone who is forced to move as a result of climate change does not fit the current

Protection in international law 23 international legal definition of ‘refugee’.27 Rather, there is resistance (e.g. from UNHCR) to categorising refugees on these grounds. However, to remove this limitation, some researchers and humanitarian agencies suggest expanding the traditional definition of ‘refugee’ to include individuals fleeing environmental degradation so that they can have access to the same international structure of humanitarian assistance and protection.28 Others disagree, arguing that the current refugee structure is not an appropriate framework for most cases of environment/climate-related displacement since it was constructed more than 70 years ago for a very different context: to address post-Second World War scenarios.29 The legislative history of international refugee law indicates that the drafters of the Refugee Convention deliberately declined to extend protection to people displaced for environmental reasons, although they had recognised environmental degradation as a major cause of human migration.30 Modification of the definition of ‘refugee’, a definition that has survived without modification for more than five decades, seems politically unfeasible considering the very likely opposition of receiving countries and the attitudes and priorities of governments.31 It is also unlikely that ‘donor countries would allow the current refugee regime with its fixed set of refugee rights to be extended to cover a group of refugees that is 20 times larger than that currently covered’,32 while they may even be reluctant to provide adequate protection or respect their existing obligations to traditional refugees under the Convention. The governments of developed countries in some cases also have concerns that such a move would open the ‘refugee floodgates’ from developing and least developing countries (LDCs) to their countries. The reality is that there is no consensus and political mobilisation for extending the refugee regime; such a move would encounter prohibitively strict ‘resistance from the international community and from the main organ of refugee protection, UNHCR’.33 The UNHCR considers ‘lumping both groups together under the same heading would further cloud the issues and could undermine efforts to help and protect either group and to address the root causes of either type of displacement’.34 Even if the refugee framework were expanded to cover climate-related displacement, it would potentially exclude from international protection the vast majority of people displaced by climate change and struggling to secure refugee status within a country and/or not able to cross an international border due to poverty, lack of education, networks and so on.35 Since the Refugee Convention does not provide protection until after entry into the jurisdiction of another country, displaced persons have to leave their home and cross an international border to be qualified as ‘environmental/ climate change refugee’. There is every possibility that, under an expanded definition of ‘refugee’, only affluent people with money, resources, networks

24

Protection in international law

and education will exploit this opportunity to obtain a ‘climate refugee’ status. Expansion of the refugee structure would also require, at the domestic level, the implementation of national legislation or policies, offering a scope for reluctant states to impose more stringent measures restricting the ability of ‘climate refugees’ to cross borders.36 The earlier discussion demonstrates that there are significant and fundamental differences between traditional refugees accorded status under the Refugee Convention and those now more commonly referred to as environmental/climate change ‘refugees’.37 Existing refugee structures and norms, founded on providing protection for people fleeing imminent danger, are ill-suited to addressing the contemporary challenge of climaterelated displacement that may have slow-onset causes, such as an eroding river bank or a rising sea level, and that demands ‘safety from longer-term processes of climate change which may ultimately render a person’s home uninhabitable’.38 In reality, these people require a different kind of protection, planned and organised with the support of the government and public agencies, which is the opposite of political or religious persecution.39 Protection within the non-refoulement principle, complementary protection and human rights regime Given the limited applicability of the Refugee Convention, the question arises as to how international law treats climate-related migrants who cross an international border/s in response to climatic natural disasters. The fundamental principle of non-refoulement (i.e. the prohibition on return to torture, cruel or inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment) is widely regarded as part of customary international law and has counterparts in human rights law known as ‘complementary protection’. Complementary protection is the generic name which results from international legal obligations not to return a person to serious ill-treatment such as torture, cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment. Thus, human rights regimes have expanded countries’ protection obligations beyond the ‘refugee’ category to include a person who is not entitled to protection under the 1951 Convention but cannot be returned to his or her country of origin because of risk of arbitrary deprivation of life, torture, or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.40 The provision for ‘temporary and complementary protection’ is also endorsed in various regional treaties and decisions of the regional courts. States have an obligation to provide complementary protection under two renowned human rights treaties: namely, Article 3 of the 1984 Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT) and Articles 6 and 7 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR).41 Under Article 3 of the

Protection in international law 25 CAT, there is a clear and absolute prohibition on returning an individual to a country where one is at risk of being tortured. Interestingly, the Convention applies to persons who fear torture, regardless of whether the person has committed a crime or entered a country illegally. Moreover, unlike the Refugee Convention, it does not require that torture, cruel, inhuman or degrading punishments are based on race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group or political opinion. The obligation for the state not to repress those persons is, however, temporary and lasts only as long as the threat of torture exists.42 In addition, Article 7 of the ICCPR has been interpreted as absolutely prohibiting the removal of an individual to a place where he is at real risk of torture or to ‘cruel or inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment’. However, the Human Rights Committee has noted that Article 2 of the ICCPR, governing the general obligation of States Parties, requires countries to refrain from removing an individual from their territory where there are substantial grounds for believing that there is a real risk of irreparable harm, such as that contemplated by articles 6 and 7 of the Covenant, either in the country to which removal is to be effected or in any country to which the person may subsequently be removed.43 Moreover, most of the provisions in the ICCPR and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), as well as in other universal human rights instruments, apply to all individuals in the territory of a state, irrespective of their nationality. Thus, non-nationals who are granted relief from removal (whether or not on the basis of the 1951 Convention) are entitled to a core set of rights, unless an objective reason can be found to distinguish (as opposed to discriminate) them from the population at large. Thus, it is clear that ‘states are under a duty to admit an individual if rejection at the border might lead to them to suffer torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment’.44 Once individuals have been granted protection from removal, they are entitled to basic human rights such as freedom of political opinion and religious belief, equality before the law, right to life and freedom from arbitrary detention. It is arguable, therefore, that people, who in the face of environmental degradations cross an international border, under certain circumstances could receive a complementary and temporary form of protection, whatever their status as refugees, migrants or illegal intruders. The return of a person to an area where the person faces extremely severe (life threatening) environmental problems, constitutes a violation of human rights law (based, for example, on the right to life or the freedom from inhumane treatment).

26

Protection in international law

It is extremely likely that climate-related events and processes will, in all likelihood, increasingly interfere with the enjoyment of fundamental human rights, including the right to food, the right to water, the right to health and the right to adequate housing. Generally, serious or systematic human rights violations are normally considered as ‘persecution’ giving rise to a nonrefoulement obligation. For example, the right to life is non-derogable, with very few exceptions; hence, a person should not be sent back to her country of origin if there is a danger to her life. Violation of a socio-economic right, in particular, ‘violation of the right to an adequate standard of living is recharacterised as a form of inhuman treatment, which is a right giving rise to international protection’.45 However, ‘courts have carefully circumscribed the meaning of “inhuman or degrading treatment” so that it cannot be used as a remedy for general poverty, unemployment, or lack of resources or medical care except in the most exceptional circumstances’.46 It is evident that the ICCPR confers an obligation to all states’ parties to extend complementary protection irrespective of domestic codification to all people displaced by environmental conditions, provided that those conditions amount to inhuman or degrading treatment.47 In the absence of any direct protection regime, this protection provides an alternative ‘legal right to protection’ to people displaced by climate change.48 Thus, the human rights regime, the non-refoulement principle and complementary protection mechanisms can provide building blocks for new ways of affording protection to climate-related human mobility. Extending protection to climate-related mobility within the UNFCCC framework While climate-related migration and displacement does not fit well within the international refugee law framework, some scholars have suggested that the UNFCCC should extend its protection to include people displaced by climate change. Biermann and Boas advocated for adopting an effective and meaningful multilateral agreement in the form of a climate change displacement protocol through the UNFCCC negotiation process to protect people displaced directly because of specific impacts of climate change.49 Warren (2016) suggests developing a ‘climate displacement coordination facility’50 within the UNFCCC framework in association with the UN Security Council to protect climate migrants. It should be noted here that the 2015 Paris negotiations considered the idea of establishing a ‘Climate Change Displacement Facility’ under the UNFCCC to provide emergency relief as well as to assist in providing organised migration, planned relocation and to undertake compensation measures.51 However, it did not finally materialise after significant resistance from a few states against the key clause in the draft version of the Paris Agreement. However, the Task Force on

Protection in international law 27 Displacement related to the adverse impacts of climate change established by the 2015 Paris Agreement, the UNFCCC’s successor treaty, does endorse the view of extending protection measures on climate-related migration and displacement within the UNFCCC framework.52 Chapter 3 examines in detail the role of the UNFCCC in recognising and protecting those facing and undergoing climate-related mobility. A separate treaty for the protection of climate-related migration and displacement Recognising the fact that both the options of expansion of the Refugee Convention and developing a separate protocol under the UNFCCC have restricted mandates, and legal and/or political limitations, to deal with the issue of climate-related migration and displacement appropriately, some, such as Docherty and Giannini and Hodgkinson et al. have argued for an entirely independent convention addressing climate-related migration and displacement to deal with the underlying issues raised by the displacement problem and to fill the legal vacuum in international law for the protection of this group of people.53 To develop an international framework, some argue that, since the causation and extent of this displacement problem is global, the solution to managing the predicted large numbers of displacements as a result of climate change must be via an international framework based on the principles of international cooperation. According to Docherty and Giannini, a separate framework: [w]ould provide a number of advantages, including: 1) deserved prioritisation of the large and emerging problem of climate change refugees; 2) the flexibility needed for a specialised framework that blends principles and solutions drawn from human rights, humanitarian assistance, and international environmental law; and 3) better opportunities for the inclusion of civil society and affected communities in the design and negotiation of the treaty.54 They also argue that a separate treaty framework would enable the combination of multiple regimes, such as human rights, humanitarian assistance and international environmental law, into one specialised instrument, thereby ensuring both assistance and protection to climate change displaced persons and imposing affirmative obligations for states to prevent the environmental disasters that force people to leave their homes.55 However, general arguments against the proposition of a new instrument for climate-related migration and displacement are that wide consensus and ratification seem impossible; it would be an extremely costly and

28 Protection in international law time-consuming proposition, and the compliance and enforcement problem would frustrate its purpose.56 McAdam doubted the legal benefits of a new convention to address climate-related migration and displacement,57 and, in line with the outcome of the Nansen Conference in 2011, is in favour of developing ‘soft guidelines’ for the protection of this emerging category of people.58 Although there is agreement among many academics on the importance of recognising persons displaced by the effects of climate change as a ‘distinct group of migrants’ requiring special protection, scholars propose a variety of diverse solutions to protect these people. Soft-law development – normative international framework for climate-related migration and displacement As argued earlier in this chapter, climate-related migration and displacement, being an independent category of migrants, is conceptually and practically different from other forms of ‘refugees’ and deserves specific recognition and protection by the international legal framework.59 Although there have been some promising developments within the UNFCCC framework in the last decade, the international legal system and structures bear a significant gap, at both the normative and especially the operational level, for dealing with climate migrants.60 Currently, no legal instruments or international norms are mandated to deal specifically with people displaced by environmental or climatic factors either internally in a country or across borders, although existing principles of international refugee law, human rights law, humanitarian law, environmental law and laws on Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) may provide some measure of protection.61 Thus, the status, recognition and protection of people displaced due to the effects of climate change are still in limbo under international law.62 The lack of an effective global framework for climate change displacement highlights the importance of developing normative and institutional frameworks for their protection. Addressing the gaps, academics, scholars and governments, as noted previously, suggest different governance mechanisms for the protection of climate change displaced persons; no proposal has yet received global recognition to start negotiation for implemention. In the current state of global climate politics, it is unlikely that the international community will agree to amend the Refugee Convention to expand and include ‘climate refugees’, develop a separate protocol under UNFCCC or a separate and binding international legal framework for climate change displacement. Developing any such framework seems to be a ‘politically difficult, lengthy, and complicated process’63 because states will not want to be bound by hard-law policy instruments while uncertainty remains regarding the extent and nature of their obligations.64

Protection in international law 29 While there is no current agreement on future governance mechanisms, the international community has reached a consensus that ‘people on the move’ due to climate change need international recognition and protection. Consequently, there is a growing desire among states for clearer guidance on their human rights obligations towards those migrants.65 The extent and magnitude of the danger posed by climate-related migration and displacement demands the pursuit of a more sophisticated and sustainable approach that recognises and responds to present-day challenges associated with climate change displacement.66 Therefore, instead of creating new, binding norms to address the current protection gaps, it is argued that already-existing relevant human rights norms and international law so far developed and consolidated can be used for the protection of those impacted by climate-related mobility.67 Indeed, the existing broad range of international law in this field has generated wide-ranging principles and norms concerning the protection of migrants, already endorsed by those states signing up to the relevant human rights instruments. The multitude of existing international bodies, legal agreements, standards, guidelines and institutions involved in the governance of both migration and environment principally include the UN Guiding Principles on IDP, the Sendai Framework and the UN Inter-Agency Standing Committee’s Guidelines on Human Rights and Natural Disasters. Similarly, the Sphere Project’s Humanitarian Charter and Minimum Standards in Disaster Response and the humanitarian clusters under the Humanitarian Response Review process provide significant features of protection regimes for people displaced by environmental factors.68 In addition to these normative resources, however, the international human rights regime has a fairly developed legislative, instrumental and institutional structure, norms, principles and jurisprudence that evolved over the past six decades and a significant international pledge for their protection and promotion.69 It is sometimes argued that these laws and treaties were adopted when the problem of global warming and environmental degradation was not an important issue. However, Kyung-wha Kang, the Deputy High Commissioner for the Human Rights Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), believes that the international human rights framework still provides the most effective framework for addressing the human consequences of climate changeinduced displacement.70 Moreover, under existing human rights treaties, governments incur an obligation to take measures to protect the fundamental human rights of the people affected due to the effects of climate change and thus to prevent displacement.71 Apart from a treaty obligation, the constant and regular concern of the international community, evidenced through its increasing number of protective documents, state actions and so on, for the protection of human rights and the environment, reflects a

30

Protection in international law

widespread intent to be bound by environmental and human rights protections.72 Human rights and the environment are intertwined concepts, and the necessity of protecting both, including environmentally displaced persons stemming from environmental degradations as a result of climate change, has thus risen to the level of customary international law.73 The potential for these frameworks, including international human rights, humanitarian or refugee law, to offer protection to the rights of those migrating or displaced due to climate change needs to be fully explored and assessed to discover the extent to which these existing instruments may be ‘reapplied, reinterpreted and reformed’ to protect climate change-induced displaced persons.74 The next step towards protection requires the consolidation and application of these existing norms and principles. The ‘Draft articles on the protection of persons in the event of disasters’ adopted by the International Law Commission at its 68th session in 2016 is a valuable resource in the development of guidelines.75 Drawing positive experience from the UN Guiding Principles on IDPs, non-binding guidelines could be adopted for implementation and operationalisation of those norms.76 A soft-law approach is a workable way to ensure the rights and protection of those migrating or displaced due to environmental factors77 and, overall, seems to offer the most potential.78 The value of soft law is that this is a non-binding, normative framework that consolidates and defines existing universal norms from other sources within a single document and can provide clear and authoritative guidelines in a given area without the need to negotiate new binding norms.79 This non-binding nature would mean that states do not incur any obligation to implement the guidelines and enjoy the freedom to comply or not with the interpretation of the guidelines.80 Moreover, since the soft-law framework does not need to be ratified, the implementation does not entirely depend on the ratification of states, which may sometimes raise national debates.81 The previous experience of soft nonbinding norms and principles shows that once international norms are in place, compliance is usually high.82 Anne-Marie Slaughter argues that ‘soft law, provided in the form of international guidance and non-legal instruments, is emerging as an equally powerful, if not more powerful form of regulation [than hard law]’.83 Soft-law agreements have thus often played a significant role in the evolution of normative structure in human rights law, environmental law and even economic law.84 The proliferation of softlaw instruments, particularly in global environmental governance, reflects the preference of negotiating states to allow gradual crystallisation of law within emerging policy challenges.85 These principles would also provide guidance to states in dealing with cross-border movements, explaining the potential scope of human rightsbased non-refoulement.86 Thus, even though these principles would not

Protection in international law 31 bind international actors and states, climate migrants, in particular those who moved across borders, would be given some level of protection until the political will existed to form a new legal instrument.87 Thus, the guidelines would clarify the application of the existing legal and normative obligations of states towards the human rights protection of climaterelated displacement and ensure that state practices were consistent with international human rights standards and the needs of climate migrants. The context of clarifying the application of existing norms to the situation of climate-related mobility could open up new possibilities for states to develop a range of efficient and equitable practices for addressing climaterelated mobility. Soft-law guidelines thus ensure recognition, protection and international cooperation for climate change-induced displacement. A similar approach is embodied in the ‘Nansen Principles’ on climate change and displacement, adopted in Oslo in June 2011 at the Nansen Conference on Climate Change and Displacement in the 21st Century to commemorate the Refugee Agency’s 60th anniversary.88 The Nansen Principles call upon states, working in conjunction with the UNHCR, to develop ‘a guiding framework or instrument’ to address the protection needs of people displaced across borders due to climate change effects.89 These principles will provide an outline of protective measures and the obligations of states in addressing the complex challenges posed by climate-related mobility.90 As they will be soft guidelines in nature, the success of this framework will largely depend on the willingness of states to implement these principles by incorporating into national legislation and policies.91 Over time, the guidelines may become hard law through states adopting them in domestic legislation, as has occurred with the IDPs.92 For example, the African Union Kampala Convention on Internally Displaced Persons was developed based on the Guiding Principles on IDPs, setting a clear example of how soft-law instruments can, in the course of time, transform into binding hard-law instruments.93

Notes 1 Lauren Nishimura, ‘“Climate Change Migrants”: Impediments to a Protection Framework and the Need to Incorporate Migration into Climate Change Adaptation Strategies’ (2015) 27 (1) International Journal of Refugee Law 1, 2. 2 Ibid. 3 See, e.g., Jane McAdam, Climate Change, Forced Migration and International Law (Oxford University Press, 2012); Jane McAdam (ed.), Climate Change and Displacement: Multidisciplinary Perspectives (Hart, 2010); Benoît Mayer and François Crépeau (eds), Research Handbook on Climate Change, Migration and the Law (Edward Elgar, 2017); Simon Behrmann and Avidan Kent (eds), ‘Climate Refugees’: Beyond the Legal Impasse (Routledge, 2018). Cited in Miriam Cullen, ‘“Eaten by the Sea”: Human Rights Claims for the Impacts

32

4 5 6

7

8 9 10 11 12 13

14 15 16

17

Protection in international law of Climate Change upon Remote Subnational Communities’ (2018) 9(2) Journal of Human Rights and the Environment 171, 171. Phillip Dane Warren, ‘Forced Migration After Paris COP21: Evaluating the “Climate Change Displacement Coordination Facility”’ (2016) 116 (8) Columbia Law Review 2103, 2104. See ibid.; Lauren Nishimura, ‘“Climate Change Migrants”: Impediments to a Protection Framework and the Need to Incorporate Migration into Climate Change Adaptation Strategies’ (2015) 27 (1) International Journal of Refugee Law. François Gemenne and Pauline Brücker, ‘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’ (2015) 27(2) International Journal of Refugee Law 245, 245; Nishimura, (n 5) 10. Rina Kuusipalo, ‘Exiled by Emissions – Climate Change Related Displacement and Migration in International Law: Gaps in Global Governance and the Role of the UN Climate Convention’ (2017) 18 Vermont Journal of Environmental Law 614, 628. Nishimura, (n 5) 10. Nishimura, (n 5) 2. Frank Biermann and Ingrid Boas, ‘Preparing for a Warmer World: Towards a Global Governance System to Protect Climate Refugees’ (2010) 10(1) Global Environmental Politics, 61, 62–63. Bonnie Docherty and Tyler Giannini, ‘Confronting a Rising Tide: A Proposal for a Convention on Climate Change Refugees’ (2009) 33 Harvard Environmental Law Review, 349, 367. See Gemenne and Brücker, (n 6) 246. Koko Warner, ‘Global Environmental Change and Migration: Governance Challenges’ (2010) 20 Global Environmental Change 402, 403; David Hodgkinson et al., ‘Copenhagen, Climate Change “Refugees” and the Need for a Global Agreement’ (2009) 4(2) Public Policy 155, 165. Aurelie Lopez, ‘The Protection of Environmentally-Displaced Persons in International Law’ (2007) 37 Environmental Law 365, 367; Warner, ‘Global Environmental Change and Migration’, (n 20) 404. Jane McAdam and Ben Saul, ‘An Insecure Climate for Human Security? ClimateInduced Displacement and International Law’ (Sydney Centre Working Paper No. 4, Sydney Centre for International Law, 2008) 2. See, e.g., Biermann and Boas, (n 10); Docherty and Giannini, (n 11); Christine Gibb and James Ford, ‘Should the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Recognize Climate Migrants?’ (2012) 7 Environmental Research Letters; David Hodgkinson et al., ‘The Hour When the Ship Comes In: A Convention for Persons Displaced by Climate Change’ (2010) 36 Monash University Law Review; Benoit Mayer, ‘The International Legal Challenges of Climate-Induced Migration: Proposal for an International Legal Framework’ (2011) 22 Colorado Journal of International Environmental Law and Policy; Angela Williams, ‘Turning the Tide: Recognizing Climate Change Refugees in International Law’ (2008) 30 Law & Policy. Cited in Katrina M. Wyman, ‘Are We Morally Obligated to Assist Climate Change Migrants?’ (2013) 7(2) Law and Ethics of Human Rights 185, 187. Brooke Havard, ‘Seeking Protection: Recognition of Environmentally Displaced Persons under International Human Rights Law’ (2007) 18 Villanova Environmental Law Journal 74.

Protection in international law 33 18 Richard Black, ‘Environmental Refugees: Myth or Reality?’ (New Issues in Refugee Research, Working Paper No 34, UNHCR, 2001); Stephen Castles, ‘Environmental Change and Forced Migration: Making Sense of the Debate’ (New Issues in Refugee Research, Working Paper No 70, UNHCR, 2002); Dana Zartner Falstrom, ‘Stemming the Flow of Environmental Displacement: Creating a Convention to Protect Persons and Preserve the Environment’ (2001) 1 Colorado Journal of International Law and Policy 2. 19 Hermen J Ketel, ‘Global Warming and Human Migration’ in Antoaneta Yotova, Climate Change, Human Systems and Policy (2004) 1. 20 UNHCR, ‘Climate Change, Natural Disasters and Human Displacement: A UNHCR Perspective’ (UNHCR, 2009) 9. 21 Jessica B Cooper, ‘Environmental Refugees: Meeting the Requirements of the Refugee Convention’ (1998) 6 New York University Environmental Law Journal 480, 501–502. 22 Ibid. 23 Lopez, (n 14) 378, 380. 24 UNHCR, (n 20) 9. 25 Williams, (n 16) 507. 26 David Corlett, Stormy Weather: The Challenge of Climate Change and Displacement (University of New South Wales Press Ltd, 2008) 46. 27 Falstrom, (n 18) 2; Lopez, (n 14) 378, 380. 28 Cooper, (n 21) 501–502. 29 Falstrom, (n 18) 2; Williams, (n 16) 507. 30 Lopez, (n 14) 378, 380. 31 Lopez, (n 14) 378, 392; Etienne Piguet, ‘Climate Change and Forced Migration’ (UNHCR, 2008) 8. 32 Biermann and Boas, (n 10) 74. 33 Gregory S McCue, ‘Environmental Refugees: Applying International Environmental Law to Involuntary Migration’ (1993) 6 Georgetown International Environmental Law Review 151, 177. 34 UNHCR, (n 20). 35 Lopez, (n 14) 378, 392. 36 Kara K Moberg, ‘Extending Refugee Definitions to Cover Environmentally Displaced Persons Displaces Necessary Protection’ (2009) 94 Iowa Law Review 1107, 1128. 37 Williams, (n 16) 509. 38 Falstrom, (n 18) 2; Williams, (n 14) 510. 39 Biermann and Boas, (n 10) 74. 40 Jane McAdam, ‘Swimming against the Tide: Why a Climate Change Displacement Treaty is not the Answer’ (2011) 23(1) International Journal of Refugee Law 2, 4, 5, 17. 41 Roger Zetter, ‘Protecting Environmentally Displaced People: Developing the Capacity of Legal and Normative Frameworks’ (Research Report, Refugee Studies Centre, 2011) 20. 42 Ibid., 19. 43 Paragraph 12 of General Comment No. 31 (2004) of the UN Human Rights Committee on the Nature of the General Legal Obligation Imposed on States Parties to the Covenant. 44 Ruma Mandal, ‘Protection Mechanism Outside of the 1951 Convention (“Complementary Protection”)’ (UNHCR, 2005).

34 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60

61 62 63 64

65 66 67 68 69 70

71 72 73 74 75

Protection in international law McAdam, (n 40) 17. Ibid. Zetter, (n 41) 20. Ibid. Biermann and Boas, (n 10) 75–83. Phillip Dane Warren, ‘Forced Migration After Paris COP21: Evaluating the “Climate Change Displacement Coordination Facility”’ (2016) 116 (8) Columbia Law Review 2103, 2110. Kuusipalo, (n 7) 640. Ibid. Docherty and Giannini, (n 11) 397–401. Ibid. Ibid., 398. Scott, (n 52) 6; Williams, (n 16) 517. McAdam, (n 40) 2, 4, 5, 17; Jane McAdam and Ben Saul, (n 15) 234, 279. Jane McAdam, Climate Change, Forced Migration and International Law (Oxford University Press, 2012) 237–266. Williams, (n 16) 514. Docherty and Giannini, (n 11) 357. Biermann and Boas, (n 10) 75–83; Bruce Burson, ‘Protecting the Rights of People Displaced by Climate Change: Global Issues and Regional Perspective’ in Bruce Burson (ed.), Climate Change and Migration South Pacific Perspective (Institute of Policy Studies, 2010) 171; Alexander Betts, ‘Towards a “Soft Law” Framework for the Protection of Vulnerable Migrants’ (Research Paper No. 162, UNHCR, 2008) 13. Biermann and Boas, (n 10) 75–83; McAdam and Saul, (n 15) 25; Zetter, (n 41) 16. McAdam and Saul, (n 15) 25. Burson, (n 59) 171. Philippe Boncour and Bruce Burson, ‘Climate Change and Migration in the South Pacific Region: Policy Perspectives’ in Bruce Burson (ed.), Climate Change and Migration South Pacific Perspective (Institute of Policy Studies, 2010) 21. Betts, (n 59) 4. Williams, (n 16) 524. Roger Zetter, ‘Legal and Normative Frameworks’ (2008) 31 Forced Migration Review 62, 62. Ibid. M Rafiqul Islam, ‘The Right to the Environment as a Human Right’ in Mizanur Rahman (ed.) Human Rights and Environment (ELCOP, 2011) 5, 22. Kyung-wha Kang, ‘Climate Change, Migration and Human Rights’ (Speech delivered at the Conference on Climate Change and Migration: Addressing Vulnerabilities and Harnessing Opportunities, Geneva, 19 February 2008) . Walter Kälin, ‘Disaster Risk Mitigation – Why Human Rights Matter’ (2008) 31 Forced Migration Review 38, 38. Falstrom, (n 18) 24. Ibid. Zetter, (n 41) 16; Boncour and Burson, (n 63) 19. United Nations, ‘Draft Articles on the Protection of Persons in the Event of Disasters’

Protection in international law 35 76 Betts, (n 59) 14. 77 Boncour and Burson, (n 63) 21. 78 Roger Zetter, ‘The Role of Legal and Normative Frameworks for the Protection of Environmentally Displaced People’ in Frank Laczko and Christine Aghazarm (eds), Migration, Environment and Climate Change: Assessing the Evidence (2009) 387, 421. 79 Betts, (n 59) 12–13; Vikram Kolmannskog and Lisetta Trebbi, ‘Climate Change, Natural Disasters and Displacement: A Multi-track Approach to Filling the Protection Gaps’ (2010) 92(879) International Review of the Red Cross 713, 728. 80 Betts, (n 59) 14. 81 Benoit Mayer, ‘The International Legal Challenges of Climate-Induced Migration: Proposal for an International Legal Framework’ (2011) 22 Colorado Journal of International Environmental Law and Policy 357, 408–409. 82 Abram Chayes and Antonia Handler Chayes, The New Sovereignty: Compliance with International Regulatory Agreements (Harvard University Press, 1998). 83 Anne-Marie Slaughter, A New World Order (Princeton University Press, 2004) 178. 84 Bharat H Desai, Institutionalizing International Environmental Law (Brill, 2004) 114. 85 Ibid. 86 Jane McAdam, ‘Climate Change Displacement and International Law: Complementary Protection Standards’ (UNHCR, 2011) 57. 87 Sodiqa Williams, ‘“Do What You Can Do With What You Have Where You Are” – Assessing the Plight of Climate Change Refugees and Approaches to Fill the Gaps within the International Legal Framework’ (2011) 1 Chicago – Kent Journal of Environmental and Energy Law 103, 107. 88 Margareta Wahlström and Harald Dovland, Chairpersons Summary, Nansen Conference on Climate Change and Displacement in the 21st Century, Oslo, 6–7 June 2011. 89 The Nansen Principles on Climate Change and Displacement 90 ADB, ‘Climate Change and Migration in Asia and the Pacific’ (ADB, 2012) 56. 91 Ibid. 92 Another promising approach is one taken by the African Union (AU). In 2009, Kampala adopted the AU Convention for the Protection and Assistance of IDPs in Africa. The Kampala Convention, as it is known, is based on the Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement and is an important example of the translation of ‘soft law’ into ‘hard law’ at a regional level. Art. 4 of the Convention states that ‘State parties shall take measures to protect and assist persons who have been internally displaced due to natural or human made disasters, including climate change’. Again, this represents an important tool in the protection of those displaced because of environmental change. 93 Boncour and Burson, (n 63) 21.

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Biermann, F & Boas, I 2010, ‘Preparing for a Warmer World: Towards a Global Governance System to Protect Climate Refugees’ Global Environmental Politics, vol. 10, no. 1, pp. 60–88. Black, R 2001, ‘Environmental Refugees: Myth or Reality?’ New Issues in Refugee Research – UNHCR, Working Paper No. 34, pp. 1–20. Boncour, P & Burson, B 2010, ‘Climate Change and Migration in the South Pacific Region: Policy Perspectives’ in Bruce Burson (ed), Climate Change and Migration South Pacific Perspective, Institute of Policy Studies, Wellington. Burson, B 2010, ‘Protecting the Rights of People Displaced by Climate Change: Global Issues and Regional Perspective’ in Bruce Burson (ed), Climate Change and Migration South Pacific Perspective, Institute of Policy Studies, Wellington. Castles, S 2002, ‘Environmental Change and Forced Migration: Making Sense of the Debate’ New Issues in Refugee Research – UNHCR, Working Paper No. 70, pp. 1–16. Chayes, A & Chayes, A H 1998, The New Sovereignty: Compliance with International Regulatory Agreements, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA. Cooper, J B 1998, ‘Environmental Refugees: Meeting the Requirements of the Refugee Convention’ New York University Environmental Law Journal, vol. 6, pp. 480–530. Corlett, D 2008, Stormy Weather: The Challenge of Climate Change and Displacement, University of New South Wales Press Ltd, NSW. Cullen, M 2018, ‘“Eaten by the Sea”: Human Rights Claims for the Impacts of Climate Change upon Remote Subnational Communities’ Journal of Human Rights and the Environment, vol. 9, no. 2, pp. 171–193. Desai, B H 2004, Institutionalizing International Environmental Law, Brill, Leiden, The Netherlands. Docherty, B & Giannini, T 2009, ‘Confronting a Rising Tide: A Proposal for a Convention on Climate Change Refugees’ Harvard Environmental Law Review, vol. 33, pp 349–404. Falstrom, D Z 2001, ‘Stemming the Flow of Environmental Displacement: Creating a Convention to Protect Persons and Preserve the Environment’ Colorado Journal of International Law and Policy, vol. 1, pp. 1–30. 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, vol. 27, no. 2, pp. 245–263. Gibb, C & Ford, J 2012, ‘Should the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Recognize Climate Migrants?’ Environmental Research Letters, vol. 7, 045601. Havard, B 2007, ‘Seeking Protection: Recognition of Environmentally Displaced Persons under International Human Rights Law’ Villanova Environmental Law Journal, vol. 18, pp. 65–82. Hodgkinson, D et al. 2009, ‘Copenhagen, Climate Change “Refugees” and the Need for a Global Agreement’ Public Policy, vol. 4, no. 2, pp. 155–174. Hodgkinson, D et al. 2010, ‘“The Hour When the Ship Comes In”: A Convention for Persons Displaced by Climate Change’ Monash University Law Review, vol. 36, pp. 69–120.

Protection in international law 37 Islam, M R 2011, ‘The Right to the Environment as a Human Right’ in Mizanur Rahman (ed), Human Rights and Environment, ELCOP, Dhaka. Kälin, W 2008, ‘Disaster Risk Mitigation – Why Human Rights Matter’ Forced Migration Review, vol. 31, pp. 38–39. Kang, K 2008, ‘Climate Change, Migration and Human Rights’ Speech delivered at the Conference on Climate Change and Migration: Addressing Vulnerabilities and Harnessing Opportunities, Geneva, 19 February 2008. Ketel, H J 2004, ‘Global Warming and Human Migration’ in Antoaneta Yotova (ed), Climate Change, Human Systems and Policy, UNESCO-EOLSS, Paris. Kolmannskog, V & Trebbi, L 2010, ‘Climate Change, Natural Disasters and Displacement: A Multi-track Approach to Filling the Protection Gaps’ International Review of the Red Cross, vol. 92, pp. 713–730. Kuusipalo, R 2017, ‘Exiled by Emissions – Climate Change Related Displacement and Migration in International Law: Gaps in Global Governance and the Role of the UN Climate Convention’ Vermont Journal of Environmental Law, vol. 18, pp. 614–647. Lopez, A 2007, ‘The Protection of Environmentally-Displaced Persons in International Law’ Environmental Law, vol. 37, pp. 365–409. Mandal, R 2005, Protection Mechanism Outside of the 1951 Convention (“Complementary Protection”), UNHCR, Geneva. Mayer, B 2011, ‘The International Legal Challenges of Climate-Induced Migration: Proposal for an International Legal Framework’ Colorado Journal of International Environmental Law and Policy, vol. 22, pp. 357–416. Mayer, B & Crépeau, F (eds) 2017, Research Handbook on Climate Change, Migration and the Law, Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, UK. McAdam, J (ed) 2010, Climate Change and Displacement: Multidisciplinary Perspectives, Hart, Oxford. McAdam, J 2011, Climate Change Displacement and International Law: Complementary Protection Standards, UNHCR, Geneva. McAdam J 2011, ‘Swimming against the Tide: Why a Climate Change Displacement Treaty is not the Answer’ International Journal of Refugee Law, vol. 23, no. 1, pp. 2–27. McAdam, J 2012, Climate Change: Forced Migration and International Law, Oxford University Press, Oxford. McAdam, J & Saul, B 2008, ‘An Insecure Climate for Human Security? ClimateInduced Displacement and International Law’ Sydney Centre for International Law, Working Paper No. 4. McCue G S 1993, ‘Environmental Refugees: Applying International Environmental Law to Involuntary Migration’ Georgetown International Environmental Law Review, vol. 6, pp. 151–190. Moberg, K 2009, ‘Extending Refugee Definitions to Cover Environmentally Displaced Persons Displaces Necessary Protection’ Iowa Law Review, vol. 94, pp. 1107–1136. Nishimura, L 2015, ‘Climate Change Migrants: Impediments to a Protection Framework and the Need to Incorporate Migration into Climate Change Adaptation Strategies’ International Journal of Refugee Law, vol. 27, no. 1, pp. 107–134.

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Piguet, E 2008, ‘Climate Change and Forced Migration’ New Issues in Refugee Research – UNHCR, Working Paper No. 153, pp. 1–13. Slaughter, A-M 2004, A New World Order, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ. UNHCR 2009, Climate Change, Natural Disasters and Human Displacement: A UNHCR Perspective, UNHCR, Geneva. United Nations, Draft Articles on the Protection of Persons in the Event of Disasters, United Nations, viewed 24 June 2020, https://legal.un.org/ilc/texts/instruments/ english/draft_articles/6_3_2016.pdf Wahlström, M & Dovland, H 2011, Chairpersons Summary, Nansen Conference on Climate Change and Displacement in the 21st Century, Oslo, 6–7 June 2011. Warner, W 2010, ‘Global Environmental Change and Migration: Governance Challenges’ Global Environmental Change, vol. 20, pp. 402–413. Warren, P D 2016, ‘Forced Migration After Paris COP21: Evaluating the “Climate Change Displacement Coordination Facility”’ Columbia Law Review, vol. 116, no. 8, pp. 2103–2144. Williams, A 2008, ‘Turning the Tide: Recognizing Climate Change Refugees in International Law’ Law & Policy, vol. 30, no. 4, pp. 502–529. Williams, S 2011, ‘“Do What You Can Do With What You Have Where You Are” – Assessing the Plight of Climate Change Refugees and Approaches to Fill the Gaps within the International Legal Framework’ Chicago – Kent Journal of Environmental and Energy Law, vol. 1, pp. 103–132. Wyman, K M 2013, ‘Are We Morally Obligated to Assist Climate Change Migrants?’ Law and Ethics of Human Rights, vol. 7, no. 2, pp. 185–212. Zetter, R 2008, ‘Legal and Normative Framework’ Forced Migration Review, vol. 31, pp. 62–63. Zetter, R 2009, ‘The Role of Legal and Normative Frameworks for the Protection of Environmentally Displaced People’ in Frank Laczko and Christine Aghazarm (eds), Migration, Environment and Climate Change: Assessing the Evidence, IOM, Geneva. Zetter, R 2011, Protecting Environmentally Displaced People: Developing the Capacity of Legal and Normative Frameworks, Research Report, Refugee Studies Centre, UK.

3

Emerging global consensus towards recognition and protection of climate change and human mobility

Introduction The imprecise and multi-causal nature of migration generates potential involvement in climate-related mobility initiatives by many institutional actors. Both Susan Martin in 20121 and Teresa Thorp in 20172 use the word ‘plethora’ to describe the large number of international actors involved in climate-related mobility protection mechanisms. Plethora denotes excess and is perhaps unfair in this context. Certainly, there are many UN organisations with some degree of interest and involvement in climate-related mobility issues. But, in the absence of one precise international legal framework for climate-related mobility, one precise international institutional responsibility for climate-related mobility will also be absent. To the outsider the ‘plethora’ of institutional acronyms will indeed seem like alphabet soup. Looked at through a policy rather than an institutional lens, however, the view does become clearer. Chapter 2 demonstrates that the international community has yet to address the issue with an effective action plan showing how the protection needs of people displaced by the effects of climate change can be met; so far, ‘no agreed approach on how to tackle the problem’ has been observed.3 In this enduring vacuum, it is important to explore the approaches of international law and relevant institutions concerning key climate-related mobility issues and examine how these institutions can better respond and provide effective solutions.4 In this chapter, we look at six policy areas defining the main UN actions on climate-related mobility: climate change; disaster risk reduction and management; human rights; refugees; migration; and sustainable development. We attempt to present these policy areas with a chronological perspective, showing when and how key UN organisations per policy area first became involved in the climate-related mobility debate. We summarise the key developments in each policy area in a text box and then merge these key developments into a timeline illustration in Chapter 4.

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Start dates per policy area are, to a certain extent, arbitrary; for example, in the summary of ‘Steps Towards Consensus’ on human rights, we choose as our start date 2007 and the adoption of the Malé Declaration. Earlier actions feed into this chosen start date, notably 1948, the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the UN General Assembly, and 1998, the adoption of the Guiding Principles of Internal Displacement by the UN Commission on Human Rights.5

Climate change Introduction Chapter 2 demonstrates that, while for some years there has been growing advocacy regarding climate-related mobility issues, in the initial stages of this emerging political debate, few international initiatives were actually agreed upon and implemented. Walter Kälin, a member of the Human Rights Committee of the UN, observed in 2011 that climate-related mobility issues had been ‘largely neglected in international discussions thus far’.6 This was a fair description of the position of climate-related mobility in climate change negotiations in the late 2000s. As with the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) and UNHCR, the UNFCCC first steps were taken in the late 2000s in raising climate-related mobility issues at the 2008 (COP14 Poznan) and 2009 (COP15 Copenhagen) meetings. The 2009 UNHRC Resolution 10/4 had encouraged the High Commissioner to participate in COP15. Key government actors were cooperating more closely on human rights and climate change issues. Expert groups and third sector organisations were also coming together more in a variety of settings to raise the profile of climate-related mobility issues, such as the Geneva Experts Meeting.7 Warner (2011) highlighted the role from 2008 of the InterAgency Standing Committee Task Force on Climate Change in bringing together ‘a spectrum of UN, international, and civil society organisations concerned with migration and displacement’.8 Warner (2012) described the increasing ‘mobilisation of research findings on environmental change and migration’.9 While the history of global climate change policy stretches back to the 1980s, our aim here is to focus on the key milestones relating to climaterelated mobility within the climate change framework. In this respect, inclusion of para 14(f) of the Cancún Adaptation Framework (CAF) is the starting point with regards to displacement.10 UN human rights and refugee institutions may have played an important early advocacy role in raising the global profile of climate-related mobility issues, but the infusion of climate-related mobility priorities into the UN climate change institutions

Emerging global consensus 41 and processes is key to the delivery of ‘concrete solutions’ to challenges posed by climate-related mobility. Climate-related mobility is a subset of the wider climate change issue. The principal forum for the solution of climaterelated mobility challenges must be the principal climate change forum, the UNFCCC.11 International climate change regime The international climate change regime is a combination of multiple and complex instruments and processes, including the UNFCCC, the Paris Agreement and a number of both binding and voluntary decisions and agreements. The regime has multiple institutional wings to address different aspects of climate change. One of its most prominent wings is the IPCC, which was created by the UN’s World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and UN Environment Programme (UNEP) to assess the science related to climate change. Since 1990 the IPCC regularly publishes assessment reports regarding the current state of climate change based on scientific evidence. UNFCCC negotiations are supplied with evidence from the IPCC.12 Assessments of climate change by the IPCC, the work of hundreds of scientists from all over the world, enable policy-makers at all levels of government to take evidence-based decisions. The IPCC is currently in its Sixth Assessment cycle. The Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) will be finalised in 2022, in time for the first UNFCCC global stocktake when countries will review progress towards their ‘Paris Agreement goal’ of keeping global warming to well below 2 °C while pursuing efforts to limit it to 1.5 °C. In 2014, the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report echoed the very first report of the IPCC from 1990,13 stating that ‘climate change over the 21st century is projected to increase displacement of people’.14 The UNFCCC, the key legal framework for climate change action,15 was adopted in 1992 by the states with the aim of addressing the adverse effects of anthropogenic climate change to protect the earth and humanity.16 As set out in Article 2, the chief UNFCCC objective is ‘stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system’17 while enabling ‘economic development to proceed in a sustainable manner’.18 The Framework Convention provides basic principles as well as broader commitments and targets to which the states are legally bound to adhere in terms of mitigation, adaptation and cooperation on addressing climate change.19 To achieve UNFCCC goals, mitigation targets were fixed by the Kyoto Protocol, signed by 192 States Parties and which mandated the 37 industrialised nations and the European Community to cut their country’s emissions to 5% below 1990 levels between 2008 and 2012.

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In its initial phase, between the early 1990s and early 2000s, the UNFCCC process mainly concentrated on the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions to tackle mounting global temperature and sea level rises.20 By this time, however, the world atmosphere had been irreversibly changed, and many parts of the world were already experiencing the worst effects of climate change. By the mid-2000s, global climate negotiations took a shift with the realisation that sufficient progress had not been met in achieving mitigation targets to hinder climate change impacts, and that more needed to be done to help vulnerable communities21 and that adaptation measures, targeted financing and so on needed to be strengthened.22 Climate change and human mobility in the UNFCCC climate negotiations The IPCC in its First Assessment Report had warned about mass human migration because of climate change impacts. For many years the Small Island Developing States (SIDS), the Vulnerable LDC Countries Group and African states had advocated to include climate-related mobility in UNFCCC COP meeting agendas. Yet, in the initial years of the UNFCCC, the terms human migration and displacement were not even ‘mentioned in official texts’23 of the UNFCCC, although the importance of addressing the issue were implied in many statements. Since the late 2000s, the parties to the UNFCCC started recognising that human mobility in the context of climate change was an important issue requiring attention.24 An important evolution occurred mostly between COP13 in 2007 and COP24 in 2018.25 Firstly, the issue of climate migration was brought into the climate negotiations by ‘a group of advocacy actors’ through a submission on the topic.26 Later, persistent advocacy before COP16 succeeded in bringing a ‘human mobility’ focus27 into COP1628 and later into COP18.29 Also, in COP19 in 2013, the Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage was adopted, and the state parties agreed to address the climate displacement issue within loss and damage discussions.30 2007 – COP13 – Bali Action Plan The 13th session of the COP, held in 2007 in Bali, is significant in many ways. Parties in this Conference affirmed their commitment to work together to address the challenges posed by climate change and realised the need to adopt an international agreement for the post-2012 Kyoto Protocol Regime.31 The meeting launched a comprehensive process for effective implementation of the UNFCCC through long-term cooperative actions

Emerging global consensus 43 beyond 2012. The most significant outcome of this COP was the adoption of the Bali Road Map, which included the Bali Action Plan, launching a new negotiation process designed to tackle climate change. The Bali Action Plan urged the state parties to implement the UNFCCC and urgently recognised the need to reach an agreement at COP15. To achieve this goal it created an Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-term Cooperative Action under the Convention (AWG-LCA) to facilitate negotiations among the state parties. Also, with the concept of loss and damage in the context of climate change risks introduced in the Bali Action Plan, the state parties agreed to work on national adaption planning, finance and loss and damage.32 2008–2009 – COP14 and COP15 Following COP13 in Bali, the humanitarian and community organisations, via the Inter-Agency Standing Committee Task Force on Climate Change (IASC), launched a campaign disseminating scientific findings concerning migration and displacement in the context of climate change, highlighting key protection needs.33 In particular, the IASC’s Sub-Group dedicated itself to constantly publicise the issue through a variety of means, such as ‘joint statements, submission to the UNFCCC, joint activities outside of the UNFCCC, and networking supported Parties in their questions about migration and displacement’.34 As a result of this advocacy campaign, for the first time the term migration was mentioned in the COP14 assembly document held in Poznan. Warner states that ‘from COP14 2008 onwards, migration maintained its presence in the draft negotiating text’.35 2010 – COP16 – Cancún Adaptation Framework Following extensive negotiation by the Ad Hoc Working Group on Longterm Cooperative Action, the Cancún Adaptation Framework (CAF) was adopted by the state parties in COP16 in 2010. As a result of increased activism and ‘advocacy work on climate change and migration’,36 COP16 in Cancún in 2010 delivered a positive outcome with agreement by the Conference of the Parties on the first reference to ‘climate change induced displacement, migration and planned relocation’.37 Para 14 invited all Parties to enhance action on adaptation under the Cancún Adaptation Framework, taking into account their common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities, and specific national and regional development priorities, objectives and circumstances, by

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Emerging global consensus undertaking . . . (f) Measures to enhance understanding, coordination and cooperation with regard to climate change induced displacement, migration and planned relocation, where appropriate, at the national, regional and international levels.

The importance of para 14(f) is that ‘it laid out the range of movements people may take, what measures should be taken, and who should undertake these actions’.38 By including three different terms – migration, displacement and planned relocation – the provision has recognised all types, forms and dimensions of human mobility as well as the obligation of the international community to respond to those categories of people.39 However, agreement was not reached easily, as McAdam and Limon (2015) outline, with many national government delegations opposed to any reference to human migration in a climate change accord.40 But opposition was overcome and a landmark agreement achieved, albeit one which ‘[f]rom a legal perspective, (was) very weak’41 (which helped soothe the opposition). But the political and long-term significance of para 14(f) should not be understated; it brought the two opposing worlds of human migration and climate change together in one international agreement and provided a base, a start-point for a new ‘era’42 of policy-making on climate-related mobility. ‘Migration as a form of adaptation’ is a phrase much used in climaterelated migration and displacement literature. It is para 14(f) that placed human mobility largely within the climate change adaptation framework.43 Further, it confirmed this as an international policy issue by combining the call for enhanced ‘action on adaptation’ with reference to climate-related mobility.44 Some commentators were guarded in their response to para 14. For Geddes et al. (2012),45 ‘the adaptive potential of migration (had) acquired some purchase at international level in the form of paragraph 14(f)’; also described by the same group as a foothold for migration, and planned relocation within paragraph 14(f).46 Ferris and Bergmann (2017) characterised it as ‘important momentum and legitimacy for the issue’.47 Although ‘non-mandatory’48 para 14 had ‘operational significance’, giving rise to international grant financing possibilities.49 Nash perceives the 14(f) provision as ‘a basis for further work’ in policymaking on climate change and migration.50 Nash (2018) and Ferris and Bergmann (2017) view the inclusion of ‘migration’ within the adaptation framework as an opportunity to gain access to adaptation financing for the measures for ‘migration, displacement and planned relocation’.51 The disbursement of funding for developing mechanisms for migration and resettlement in the context of climate change has been increased since

Emerging global consensus 45 the adoption of the CAF.52 International climate-related mobility funding might be viewed and implemented as an alternative to a new international climate-related mobility legal framework.53 However, the most significant legacy of the Cancún agreement is that there is a more obvious subsequent presence for migration, displacement and relocation in successive climate negotiations.54 2012 – COP18 The UNFCCC momentum on climate-related mobility was maintained to a degree in 2012 at COP18 in Doha, following on from Cancún, with a second ‘agreed-upon’55 climate mobility-related decision.56 In Doha, states reinforced the need to address human mobility.57 Here, the Parties agreed,58 as part of ‘[a]pproaches to address loss and damage associated with climate change impacts in developing countries that are particularly vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change to enhance adaptive capacity’, to enhance the understanding of ‘[h]ow impacts of climate change are affecting patterns of migration, displacement and human mobility’.59 This was a different phrase from that used in the Cancún Decision – ‘climate change induced displacement, migration and planned relocation’. Again, like Cancún, Doha’s significance, in terms of the development of international climate-related mobility policy-making, is political rather than legal; it spread the climate-related mobility focus beyond the climate change pillar of adaptation and onto loss and damage60 (defined a few years later in Paris at COP21 as the ‘third pillar’ of global climate change policy). Also, significant in 2012, the coming together of human rights and climate change institutions was aided by the formation of the Advisory Group on Climate Change and Human Mobility,61 comprising the UNHCR, the IOM, the United Nations University Institute for Environment and Human Security, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the Norwegian Refugee Council and its Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, Refugees International, the Centre for International Relations Studies de Sciences Po and the Arab Network for Environment and Development. Organisations with discrete mandates were increasingly working together to overcome the mismatch between their differing policy spheres of interest and the multifarious nature of climate-related mobility. This Advisory Group constantly pushed in later COPs (COP20 and COP21) for the inclusion of human mobility in the Paris Agreement.62 However, opinions differ on the significance of international climate mobility-related decisions taken after Cancún and before Paris in 2015. For McAdam and Limon (2015), this period saw scant progress ‘in integrating human rights obligations and principles into climate change policy’.63

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2013–2014 – COP19 and COP20 Building on Doha’s link between loss and damage and climate-related mobility, COP19 in Warsaw 2013 saw ‘growing recognition by states that human mobility constitutes an adaptation as well as a loss and damage issue’.64 In Warsaw, the states agreed to establish the Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage associated with Climate Change (WIM), ‘the first formal international mechanism that addresses the effects of irreversible damage due to human-induced climate change’.65 The objectives of the WIM include expanding the understanding of the relationship between climate change and human mobility, advancing cooperation among states and supporting ‘the implementation of approaches to address loss and damage in a comprehensive, integrated, and coherent manner’.66 The WIM’s initial workplan included ‘Action area 6: Enhance the understanding of and expertise on how the impacts of climate change are affecting patterns of migration, displacement and human mobility’.67 Thus, following on from Cancún, human mobility was further reinforced in the UNFCCC mechanism on loss and damage.68 From Cancún to Warsaw, we observe the arrival of climate-related mobility issues within UNFCCC decisions but without legal obligations. We also see climate-related mobility aligned with adaptation at Cancún and with loss and damage at Doha and Warsaw. A recurring phrase in the decisions is ‘enhanced understanding’, which, of course, is key to good policy-making but, as Kreienkamp and Vanhala (2017) state, ‘for vulnerable countries, the real yardstick of success will be whether the WIM delivers on its third key function – offering concrete support and mobilising resources for the most vulnerable’.69 2015 – COP21 The Paris Agreement, adopted in 2015 at COP21 in Paris, for the first time brought together all nations to combat climate change by ‘keeping a global temperature rise this century well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels’, providing a general framework for the international climate change regime.70 Atapattu (2016) characterises it as ‘an innovative legal architecture that is unprecedented in international law’.71 Just as the climate-related mobility debate moved away in the early 2010s from calls for an overarching new legal framework towards a more bottom-up approach respecting sub-supranational norms and practices (e.g. UNHCR 2015),72 so Paris shifted the wider climate change policy framework away from Kyoto-type mandatory emission reduction demands

Emerging global consensus 47 and towards a bottom-up approach,73 exemplified by the provision of Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs). Developments in global climate-related mobility policy were in tune with changes in global climate change policy. We will examine later how these Paris provisions have played out so far. For commentators in the near-term aftermath of the Paris meeting, there was praise, via the UNHCR, for the then recently concluded Paris Agreement as a ‘milestone in terms of global commitment to move from enhancing knowledge on climate-related displacement to taking action’.74 The hope and expectation was that, via the Paris Agreement, global climate-related mobility policy was shifting towards delivery of concrete solutions. Because of progressive developments relating to human mobility in COPs from Cancún onwards, there was a high expectation that the PA75 would have a specific provision on this issue.76 However, while the PA embodies a number of progressive and ‘ambitious provisions’, many scholars believe that ‘human mobility’ is not adequately addressed.77 The Paris COP21 Agreement made two climate-related mobility-relevant references: firstly, in the Preamble, the PA urges the state parties to consider the rights of migrants ‘when taking action to address climate change’: Parties should, when taking action to address climate change, respect, promote and consider their respective obligations on human rights, the right to health, the rights of indigenous peoples, local communities, migrants, children, persons with disabilities and people in vulnerable situations and the right to development, as well as gender equality, empowerment of women and intergenerational equity78 and, secondly, under Loss and Damage, in para 50 requests the Executive Committee of the Warsaw International Mechanism to establish, according to its procedures and mandate, a task force to complement, draw upon the work of and involve, as appropriate, existing bodies and expert groups under the Convention including the Adaptation Committee and the Least Developed Countries Expert Group, as well as relevant organizations and expert bodies outside the Convention, to develop recommendations for integrated approaches to avert, minimize and address displacement related to the adverse impacts of climate change.79 Interestingly, while ‘population displacement’ had been recognised as an important aspect for consideration in the context of loss and damage

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provision since COP18, the reference to ‘climate displacement’ was removed from the PA loss and damage provision.80 Opinions differed on the significance of the outcomes of the COP21 Paris Agreement; for some it was a landmark, for others a disappointing, lost opportunity. Alex Randall, of the Climate and Migration Coalition, in a December 2016 webinar,81 described the COP21 Paris Agreement as ‘monumental’, containing commitments by governments to consider climate change displacement issues. The IOM, now a Related Organization of the UN, welcomed COP21 as an ‘unprecedented breakthrough for action on migration and climate’.82 COP22 did not generate the same headlines, but its main task was to continue progress in implementing COP21 agreements, including on climate migration. The COP22 agenda contained numerous climate migration meetings, confirming the IOM’s assertion that, after COP21, the profile of climate change displacement was now much higher in UN-level climate discussions. However, it is not difficult to find criticisms of COP21 and of other international agreements on climate displacement. What COP21 agreed to on climate displacement essentially boils down to a preamble reference and a commitment to establish a task force. For some, such as the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) and the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, these actions are insufficient83 and will take too long to implement84 in the face of current, urgent climate migration challenges. For others, such as the Overseas Development Institute (ODI), what is missing is one ‘comprehensive international framework or set of national policy instruments’ on climate migration.85 Apparently, while the PA has ‘considered’86 migration, ultimately ‘it did not address questions of legal status, protection and assistance for people moving in the context of climate change’.87 2016 – COP22 COP climate-related mobility momentum continued in 2016. Following the high-profile political theatre of Paris 2015, COP22 at Marrakech focused on the implementation of the Paris Agreement and set a 2018 deadline to complete the Paris rule book. Specifically, on climate-related mobility, Marrakech approved the WIM Executive Committee five-year workplan,88 and, generally, there was increasing recognition in numerous COP fora of the importance of climate-related mobility. Requests from numerous parties called for increased resources to the WIM. Despite these being ignored at Marrakech,89 progress continued on the operationalisation of the Task Force on Displacement. The Parties acknowledged the existence of a funding gap on actions to tackle loss and damage and (at least) asked the UNFCCC

Emerging global consensus 49 Secretariat to prepare a technical paper for the 2019 review on ‘the sources of and modalities for accessing financial support’.90 The mood at Marrakech did not solely concern detailed implementation issues. More than 190 countries at COP22 issued the Marrakech Action Proclamation,91 seen as a response to (the then president-elect) Donald Trump’s threat to pull the USA out of the Paris Agreement. The first meeting of the Task Force for Displacement (TFD)92 took place in May 2017 and comprised representatives of UNHCR, UNDP, the International Organization for Migration (IOM), International Labour Organization (ILO), the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), the Platform on Disaster Displacement, Civil Society through the Advisory Group on Climate Change and Human Mobility, Adaptation Committee UNFCCC, Least Developed Countries Expert Group UNFCCC, WIM Executive Committee members from Austria, Tuvalu, Australia and Senegal, plus the UNFCCC NGO constituency ‘Local Governments and Municipal Authorities’.93 The geographical and organisational spread of TFD members confirms the success of the wide range of climate-related mobility policy stakeholders in coming together to tackle climate-related mobility policy issues. The TFD was charged with submitting draft recommendations for consideration at COP24 in Katowice in 2018. As it moves beyond mapping to the development of more concrete policy actions, the TFD will increasingly come into the policy spotlight and will face higher expectations. It remains to be seen whether it will gain sufficient COP Parties’ support to make lasting institutional and process changes in the field of climate-related mobility. Although only an ad hoc task force, the TFD placed an institutional obligation on each of its members to work collegiately, above and beyond their home organisations. Multi-partnership, supra- and inter-governmental cooperation has been a feature of climate-related mobility work in recent years, as indicated earlier. But the TFD placed a new challenge on the members, which previous informal advisory groups had not faced, to deliver outputs for a new, quasi institution of the UN. 2017 – COP23 COP23 2017 continued the Paris Agreement operationalisation process with the preparation of the draft ‘Paris rule book’ to be considered for approval at COP24 2018 in Katowice. Symbols matter in politics, and the first island state COP presidency, by Fiji at COP23, was both highly symbolic and significant, as it gave rise to agreement on the adoption of the Talanoa Dialogue,94 a traditional word and process known across the Pacific as a means to effective decision-making via inclusion, transparency and high trust. The Dialogue encouraged the state parties and civil society

50 Emerging global consensus stakeholders to exchange ideas and experiences in achieving the common goal of limiting the rise in global average temperature as set out in the PA. In response, hundreds of civil society organisations made submissions as part of the Talanoa Dialogue. The response by state parties was less promising. The evidence demonstrates that global policy development on climaterelated mobility has, so far, delivered a degree on inclusivity and transparency. But to generate high trust, global policy outcomes must move beyond their (up-to-now) ‘enhanced understanding’/mapping/information-basis and on to concrete solutions solving problems on the ground.95 High trust is garnered by the increasing emphasis on bottom-up development rather than on the pursuit of a new internal legal framework on climaterelated mobility. This was showcased at COP23 2017 via the UNHCR ‘Key Messages – COP23’,96 highlighting UNHCR’s joint work with UNFCCC, UNEP and the Commonwealth Secretariat to develop a legal toolkit supporting national governments in implementing their INDCs with examples of good practice in different regions to prevent and address climate-related mobility. Permanent, long-lasting high trust on climate-related mobility, however, demands more from global institutions and processes than has so far been delivered. Post-COP23, Nazhat Shameem Khan, Permanent Representative of Fiji to the UN Office at Geneva and Chief Negotiator for the COP23 Presidency, described COP23 as the first COP decision to recognise that the ‘Adaptation Fund shall serve the Paris Agreement’.97 Permanent high trust demands that the future tense in this phrase, ‘shall serve’, is replaced with the present tense, that the Adaptation Fund serves the Paris Agreement to the benefit of all. Conclusion While in the early 2000s the discussion on human migration and displacement in the context of climate change had always been side-lined in the UNFCCC process, gradually it has occupied a more prominent place in COP meetings, side events and negotiations. However, the journey towards this recognition was not always smooth; rather climate-related migration and displacement were seen as ‘contentious negotiation items leading up to the Paris Agreement’.98 Opinion is divided on whether international agreements on climate displacement-related issues, such as at COP21, have genuine potential to impact positively on climate migration at the local level. Looking at the broad context of COP climate change discussions, the human mobility issue

Emerging global consensus 51 has evolved, from discussions within the context of ‘climate risk management’ to more specific inclusion in the adaptation framework in Cancún, and later in the loss and damage framework.99 In the Paris Agreement we observe, with specific regard to climaterelated mobility, continued momentum, building on previous UNFCCC agreements, using the WIM Executive Committee and the links established in Doha and Warsaw between loss and damage and climate-related mobility and engaging the emerging network of experts and stakeholders beyond national governments to participate in the new task force. A recurring theme is that the political significance of global agreements in the climate-related mobility field has outweighed the creation of new legal frameworks and obligations. This is certainly the case for the Paris COP21 meeting, which, as Mihr (2017)100 noted, attracted the largest-ever single-day gathering of heads of state from across the globe. Paris may have in-built weaknesses, but it is an Agreement, in which has been invested a great deal of political capital. The Paris COP21 provisions on climaterelated mobility may seem inadequate when viewed in isolation, but they are part of a very significant political process that may pay dividends in the years ahead. But, as Manou and Mihr (2017) state: it seems unlikely that such proposals on population movement arising from climate change will gain necessary political support in the near future with regard to drafting, amending, endorsing or adopting an entirely new legal framework. On the other hand, at the national level, there have been government and civil society efforts to respond to legal, policy and administrative gaps with regard to climate migration.101 The possibility will be examined further later that some small-scale, slow progress is being made at the international level, coupled with more successful progress on climate change displacement at the national and local levels. One aspect of the climate change displacement debate, where there is common agreement, is that governments – national, regional and local – tend to view migration as a threat rather than as an opportunity. For climate migration to appear as a funding priority in national strategies and programmes, then governments need to present migration as an adaptation opportunity. This change in mindset cannot be achieved overnight. COPs 21–23 are undeniably steps in the right direction that reflect and assist this change in mindset to a more positive view of climate migration opportunities.

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Box 3.1 Steps towards consensus Climate change 2010 Cancún COP16 para 14(f): first reference to climate change displacement ‘non-mandatory (but) has operational significance’ 2012 Doha COP18 para 7a (vi): second reference Enhanced understanding of ‘How impacts of climate change are affecting patterns of migration, displacement and human mobility’ 2013 Warsaw COP19 Established WIM for loss and damage associated with climate change 2014 IPCC Fifth Assessment Report recognised that ‘climate change over the 21st century is projected to increase displacement of people’ 2015 Paris COP21 Inclusion of ‘migrants’ in the Preamble Requested WIM’s Executive Committee to establish a Climate Change Displacement Taskforce and ‘to develop recommendations for integrated approaches to avert, minimize and address displacement related to the adverse impacts of climate change’ 2016 Marrakech COP22 Set 2018 deadline to complete the rule book for operationalising the Paris Agreement, approved the WIM Executive Committee five-year workplan (Decision-/CP.22–3) 2017 Fiji COP23 First island state COP presidency Paris ‘rule book’ and Talanoa Dialogue 2018 TFD stakeholder meeting and draft recommendations for 2018 Katowice COP24

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Disaster risk reduction and disaster management Global institutions have a long history of political agreement on natural hazards and disaster risk reduction (DRR). In 1989 the UN General Assembly launched the International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction (1990–1999).102 In 1994, the Yokahama Strategy for a Safer World: Guidelines for Natural Disaster Prevention, Preparedness and Mitigation and its plan of action103 was adopted. This was followed in the late 1990s by the Geneva Mandate on Disaster Reduction, which established the UN International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR), and in the early 2000s by the Hyogo Framework for Action 2005–2015: Building the Resilience of Nations and Communities to Disasters (HFA), which sought to improve integration and coordination of action on natural hazards and disasters. Like its counterparts in other policy fields at the same time, Hyogo was nonbinding, but, as McAdam (2012) notes, it did contain binding human rights obligations to mitigate against known disaster risks.104 When we compare Hyogo and its disaster predecessors with the global actions mentioned earlier on climate change policy, we see a pattern emerging: political support, few legal obligations, good engagement with a range of stakeholders but few financial resources allocated to add meat to the bones of the political declarations. A 2011 contribution to the Hyogo mid-term review105 confirms the persistent problem of lack of resources allocated to DRR. Furthermore, despite the links between DRR and climate-related mobility, global actions on DRR up to and including Hyogo made only passing reference to displacement.106 This changed to a certain extent with the adoption of the Hyogo successor, the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030,107 also a voluntary, non-binding agreement which, as Kälin108 and Guadagno109 note, did (though not without some national government resistance) raise the profile of human mobility issues in the DRR policy field and recognise the positive role that migrants can play in DRR.110 To continue on our chronological journey through the milestones of global, climate-related mobility policy development, we need to step back from the Sendai Framework of 2015–2030. Before Sendai came into effect, a significant state-led consultative process, the Nansen Initiative,111 begun by Switzerland and Norway in 2011,112 addressed international displacement due to disasters and climate change. In 2011, the UNHCR had failed to get national governments to agree to the creation of a ‘global guiding framework’113 on climate-related mobility and natural disasters. This led to some national governments, prompted by Norway and Switzerland,114 to develop the Nansen Initiative. On the sensitive international policy intersection between human rights, climate change and cross-border displacement, national governments wanted more control of the policy formation

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process. A strength of the Initiative was its multi-disciplinarity. In this chapter, using a policy framework to analyse climate-related mobility, we could have included the Nansen Initiative in sections on human rights or climate change. Its fit in this Disaster section is strongest and is reflected in the Initiative’s own choice of words for the banner of its website, and the first word in that phrase, ‘Disaster-induced cross-border displacement’. The last part of that phrase highlights the distinct focus of the Initiative, on crossborder displacement. Although a multi-discipline and multi-stakeholder, Nansen helped itself to cut through the complications of difficult-to-define climate-related mobility by focusing, like a business choosing to target one precise market segment, on cross-border displacement. The Nansen Initiative was not intended as soft law.115 It did not give rise to codes of conduct; rather its aim was ‘soft dialogue’,116 bringing together governments and others with an interest in climate-related mobility, identifying good practice across regional variations and disseminating that good practice in the form of broad principles, defined as a protection agenda. It succeeded in these tasks and, although the Initiative expired with the adoption of the Nansen Protection Agenda in 2015 by 109 states and was in advance of the initiation of the Talanoa Dialogue by COP23 in 2017, it may be seen nonetheless to meet the Talanoa principles of inclusivity, transparency and raising trust. By delivering on its operational objectives, the Nansen Initiative also achieved a positive political outcome by assisting the placing of one subset, cross-border, of climate-related mobility ‘onto the international agenda’.117 If we compare Nansen’s outcomes with those reviewed earlier, we see a key change (and improvement in terms of tackling climate-related mobility problems) with the movement beyond ‘enhanced understanding’ of climate-related mobility towards the showcasing of practical, concrete solutions, ‘a toolbox of effective practices that are already used in different regions’, as the UNHCR (2017)118 described the Nansen Initiative Protection Agenda. Nansen was conceived as a short-term initiative, and the timing of its conclusion119 in 2015 gelled well with other global initiatives related to climate-related mobility, notably the Paris COP21 Agreement and the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030. In the mid-2010s, there were still numerous organisations and initiatives at the global level targeting initiatives, but the profile was rising and coordination and cooperation between differing policy fields was improving. Also, a common theme was emerging with both the Nansen Initiative on cross-border climate-related migration and Sendai on DRR,120 promoting the value of bottom-up, practical policy suggestions, such as, on DRR, building codes and planning laws implemented correctly. As Ferris (2017)121 notes, these initiatives, emphasising the practical, ‘[w]hile not as flashy as a new convention’, were more likely to be used by national governments.

Emerging global consensus 55 The momentum gained by the Nansen Initiative has not been lost. Germany, at the World Humanitarian Summit 2016, launched the follow-up to the Nansen Initiative, the Platform on Disaster Displacement (PDD),122 to support states in implementing the Nansen Protection Agenda. The PDD is an initiative of states established with the aim of building consensus among states on ‘the rights and protection needs of people displaced across borders in the context of disasters and climate change’.123 As with Fiji’s Presidency of COP23, a symbolic and significant handover from the Global North to Global South occurred in January 2018 when Bangladesh took over the Platform Chair from Germany. The Platform maintains Nansen’s strategic aim to spread best practice and enhance cooperation rather than promote new global legal frameworks on climate-related migration and displacement. According to McAdam (2016), the Platform will, however, ‘encourage the development of law and policy at the domestic and regional levels’.124

Box 3.2 Steps towards consensus Disaster risk reduction and management 2012 Nansen Initiative launched on international displacement due to disasters and climate change 2015 UN Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015– 2030, voluntary, non-binding agreement 2015 Nansen Protection Agenda adopted by 109 States and Nansen closure 2016 Platform on Disaster Displacement implementing the Nansen Protection Agenda recommendations

Human rights The first key international institutional developments on human rights and climate change displacement125 occurred with the adoption of UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) Resolutions 7/23126 in 2008 and 10/4 in 2009. The UN Commission on Human Rights had begun work earlier in the 2000s,127 but a key spark, setting out demands that were partly implemented in the UNHRC’s 2008 and 2009 Resolutions, was the Malé Declaration on the Human Dimension of Global Climate Change128 adopted by the Small Island Developing States (SIDS) in 2007. Ten years earlier, during the Kyoto Protocol negotiations, the SIDS had been the first to propose text calling for carbon dioxide emission cuts of 20% from 1990 levels

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by 2005.129 Going back further to the start of UN discussions on climate change in 1991, Vanuatu, on behalf of the Alliance of Small Island States, had proposed130 an international insurance pool to address damage from rising sea levels. In 2007, the SIDS were the first to promote the ‘human dimension of global climate change’ via the Malé Declaration. Admittedly, the most concrete output of these actions was the request to the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) to prepare a study on these implications ahead of a full Human Rights Council debate on the subject in March 2009. But the significance of these actions should not be understated; the first UN Resolutions had been adopted by consensus, confirming the link between climate change and human rights and, as the SIDS had also requested in the Malé Declaration, formal links with the key ‘other policy world’ of climate change had also been established with the OHCHR requested to exchange information with the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Secretariat and the High Commissioner encouraged to participate in COP15. Yet, despite these positive pronouncements, progress was slow both within the fora of the UNHRC and in the attempts to infuse human rights issues into the UNFCCC climate change negotiations. Within the fora of the UN human rights world, there was much discussion of the human rights and climate change nexus, and climate-related mobility issues were highlighted. The OHCHR’s 2009 report included a section on the issue of ‘displacement’,131 which, in six short paragraphs, clearly outlined core climate-related migration and displacement agenda items, items which persist today. But from within the overall international human rights system in the immediate years after the OHCHR 2009 report, there was no concrete action on the human rights aspects of climate change;132 a ‘malaise struck the human rights and climate change agenda at the (UNHRC) Council’, according to Limon and McAdam (2015).133 The story since 2015 on policy developments concerning climaterelated mobility and human rights is more positive and can be described as ‘mainstreaming’. Global climate change problems demand resolution in the principal global climate change forum,134 which is the UNFCCC – examined previously and in which some concrete progress has been made on climate-related mobility and human rights issues. It is wrong to view the UNHRC as having been side-lined in climate-related mobility policymaking. Rather, it has found its niche role as the institutional equivalent of an expert policy advisor to the UNFCCC on human rights issues. The UNHRC is aiding the mainstreaming of human rights issues into global climate change policy-making (e.g. its 2018 report on ‘The Slow Onset Effects of Climate Change and Human Rights Protection for Cross-Border Migrants’)135 and confirms that ‘There is now widespread recognition that

Emerging global consensus 57 the impacts of climate change adversely affect the enjoyment of human rights. There is also increasing focus on understanding the connection between climate change and human mobility, and the role human rights law plays in addressing this connection’.136

Box 3.3 Steps towards consensus Human rights First key international institutional developments on human rights and climate change displacement 2007 Malé Declaration by the Small Island Developing States Set out demands partly implemented in Resolutions 7/23 and 10/4 2008 UN Human Rights Council Resolution 7/23 First UN Resolution adopted by consensus stating that climate change ‘poses an immediate and far-reaching threat to people and communities around the world and has implications for the full enjoyment of human rights’ 2009 UN Human Rights Council Resolution 10/4 Welcomed the exchange of information between the OHCHR and the UNFCCC Secretariat and encouraged the High Commissioner to participate in COP15

Refugees The UN Refugee Agency, the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), was, like the human rights agency UNHRC, an early advocate for climate-related migration and displacement, issuing its first, subsequently amended climate-related displacement policy paper in 2008.137 However, UNHCR was unable to follow through with concrete actions as the debate developed in the 2000s. McAdam (2014) notes that it ‘was inevitable that UNHCR would be drawn into the debate on climate change and mobility, not least because of the early (mis)framing of the issue

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as being about “climate refugees”’.138 At the same time, the UNHCR played a lead role in raising the issue of climate-related displacement in various international fora. We noted earlier the UNHCR’s failed 2011 attempt to get national governments to agree to the creation of a ‘global guiding framework’139 on climate-related displacement and natural disasters. This failure may be interpreted as a sign of international institutional weakness but is also arguably an indicator of good governance – international institutions constrained by but adhering to their mandates. Just as there was an inevitability that UNHCR would be drawn into the climate refugee debate, so there was an inevitability that its mandate, in the eyes of key decision-makers, would not fit the demands of the emerging climate-related displacement problem, in particular an institution, the UNHCR, originally designed to meet short-term refugee emergencies faced with some slow-onset, longterm climate change issues. This setback at the supranational level for the UNHCR in 2011 generated, however, a positive subsequent outcome, also noted earlier, as national governments, prompted by Norway and Switzerland,140 developed the Nansen Initiative. The climate-related mobility debate has evolved positively in recent years away from the concept of the ‘climate refugee’ towards ‘a broader conception of the climate–migration nexus. In particular, the idea that migration can represent a legitimate adaptation strategy has emerged strongly’.141 The UNHCR has moved with this positive evolution and confirmed in its 2015 overview report that Rather than calling for a new binding international convention on cross-border disaster displacement, UNHCR supports an approach that focuses on the integration of effective practices by States and (sub-) regional organizations into their own normative frameworks and practices in accordance with their specific situations and challenges.142 In 2016, heads of state and government came together to discuss, for the first time at the global level within the UN General Assembly, issues related to migration and refugees. Sending a political message rather than fixing new legal commitments, the New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants143 paved the way for the adoption of two new Global Compacts on refugees and migration – the Global Compact on Refugees (GCR)144 and the Global Compact for Migration (GCM). After two years of extensive consultation led by UNHCR, the UN General Assembly adopted the GCR on 17 December 2018. The instrument is not legally binding and, instead, seeks to develop cooperation and shared responsibilities among states to deal with large influxes of refugees. It is a

Emerging global consensus 59 positive development that the GCR has recognised the reality that ‘external forced displacement may result from sudden-onset natural disasters and environmental degradation’ (para 12). Further, it emphasises the need to address such displacement and urges states facing a displacement situation to seek assistance from the international community to tackle the challenges stemming from environment/climate-related displacement. Encouragingly, the GCR emphasises the need to ‘reduce disaster risks’ (para 9), consider global, regional and national early warning mechanisms (para 53) in dealing with human movement in situations of environmental degradations and recommends including ‘refugees in disaster risk reduction strategies’ (para 79). UNHCR considers that the relevant provisions of this instrument, especially paras 61 and 63, broaden the scope of complementary protection to people displaced in the context of climate change and disasters.145

Box 3.4 Steps towards consensus Refugees UNHCR, like UNHRC, an early CCD advocate 2008 First UNHCR policy paper on ‘Climate Change, Natural Disasters and Human Displacement’ 2011 UNHCR attempted, but failed, to get national governments to agree to the creation of a ‘global guiding framework’ on CCD and natural disasters 2016 New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants 2017 Preparatory work on Global Compact on Refugees (GCR)

Migration Since the early 1990s, the IOM has been a leading advocate in global fora on environmental/climate change migration issues. In 2016, the IOM moved from being an intergovernmental body to a ‘Related Organization of the UN’.146 Before 2016, it did ‘not oversee a treaty regime and [had] little normative vision of its own’.147 But it was, with its Member States’ approval, fully engaged in climate-related migration processes, so that many of the developments reviewed here, such as the Nansen Initiative and follow-up PDD, the Task Force on Displacement and the Advisory Group on Human

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Mobility and Climate Change, have all benefited from IOM participation. Their contributions to the UNFCCC process have been significant: ‘over 40 official submissions . . . side events and press conferences every year since 2008 (and support to) each COP presidency with technical inputs’.148 Although 2016 is an important change date for the IOM, 2014 is a more appropriate start date for IOM in this chronological journey through the climate-related mobility policy milestones for two reasons. Firstly, in 2014 its governing Member States requested that the IOM increase its organisational focus on migration, environment and climate change. This gave rise to a new IOM Migration, Environment and Climate Change (MECC) Division, ‘the first international organization to have established an institutional unit fully devoted to this topic’.149 If we forget international treaty mandates for a moment and seek to identify the organisation that has invested the largest stock of human capital in the climate-related mobility global policy-making process, it is, arguably, the IOM. The IOM is the glue that has held in place the disparate parts of the climate-related mobility policy community. This facilitation role precedes its move into the UN system and is unlikely to disappear now that the IOM has been supranationalised. It also does not mean that the IOM has become the lead global institution on climate-related migration. But its new UN relationship makes its facilitation role easier. Our second reason for focusing on 2014 is that this is when the IOM launched the Migrants in Countries in Crisis (MICIC) Initiative,150 cochaired by the United States and the Philippines. Like Nansen, PDD and Sendai, this initiative was non-binding and voluntary and gave rise to best practice guidelines. It linked to Nansen and Sendai also in choice of priorities targeted, which in part was Natural Disasters, but MICIC also introduced a new environmental migration focus on ‘Countries Experiencing Conflict’. The MICIC Guidelines have been used in several countries as part of capacity-building IOM initiatives. The New York Declaration and the GCM presented opportunities to improve global governance of migration.151 The Declaration welcomed the entry of the IOM into the UN system as a positive step, which will ‘assist and protect migrants more comprehensively, help States to address migration issues and promote better coherence between migration and related policy domains’.152 The Declaration also, in para 50,153 references the MICIC and Nansen Initiatives. But the GCM is fundamentally a different creature from the MICIC Initiative, a global instrument rather than a bottom-up set of best practice guidelines devised by a small number of countries. Betts and Kainz (2017), echoing Ferris (2017), highlight MICIC and Nansen as part of ‘[a]n emerging trend . . . mini-multilateral initiatives . . . (which) offer valuable building-blocks for the creation of multilateral governance in emerging

Emerging global consensus 61 areas such as the protection of migrants in vulnerable situations’.154 They view the adoption of the Declaration and work on the Compacts as evidence that ‘[f]or virtually the first time, states are willing to discuss the human rights, security, development and governance dimensions of international migration within a United Nations framework’.155 Climate-related migration adds another contentious variable, climate change, into this mix. The GCM is an opportunity for the global migration governance system to make up lost ground on climate-related mobility. The final draft of the GCM, approved in July 2018 and formally adopted in December 2018, showed progress in making up this lost ground. The GCM formalises the international community’s recognition of the link between migration and environment/climate change. The GCM has clearly recognised the adverse effects of climate change, including ‘slow onset environmental degradation’, natural disasters and climate change impacts as drivers of migration.156 The GCM includes plentiful references in ‘Objective 2: Minimize the adverse drivers and structural factors that compel people to leave their country of origin’ to ‘Natural disasters, the adverse effects of climate change, and environmental degradation’.157 Although only a non-legally binding, cooperative framework, it emphasises ‘comprehensive potential responses’ to address the drivers of migration. The key next step, turning warm, internationally-agreed words into beneficial, concrete local actions, requires resource availability. The ‘Implementation’ section of the GCM calls for ‘[a] start-up fund for initial financing to realize project-oriented solutions’.158 Rather than providing support and assistance to migrants in emergency situations, the GCM urges states to take proactive measures to make migration a choice and facilitate population movement. Like the GCR, the GCM emphasises strengthening cooperation among states to find solutions in the context of slow-onset environmental degradation and slow-onset disasters, recognising the fact that returning to the original place may not be possible for many migrants. Another positive outcome of the GCM is that it emphasises policy coherence, highlighting that the GCM rests on a number of human rights norms and principles159 and global instruments related to climate change, disaster and environmental governance: the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Paris Climate Agreement, the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction.160 It also emphasises taking into account recommendations stemming from state-led initiatives with a focus on mobility linked to natural disasters outside of the UN context: the Nansen Initiative; its followup, the Platform on Disaster Displacement; and the MICIC Initiative.

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Experts acknowledge the recognition of climate-related migration within the GCM as a positive step but caution that much needs to be done to concretise the aspirations and commitments stated in the GCM.161 Walter Kälin from PDD, a key advocate for inclusion of climate migration in the GCM, considers it ‘a breakthrough for disaster-displaced persons’ and ‘the beginning of a long process’,162 and according to McAdam, it is ‘in many ways the beginning for the global regulation of migration’.163 To honour the commitments and achieve the goals and objectives of the Compact, the political will of national governments is crucial. A review process for the GCM will begin in 2021, and ‘it is not yet clear what form that will take’.164 Looking in summary at the overall migration policy–climate-related mobility inter-relation, a contradiction emerges between institutions and processes, between the IOM at the forefront of climate-related mobility initiatives and actions and a global migration governance system slow to pick up on climate change as a policy concern. Looking at the other side of the coin, the global climate change governance system, embodied in UNFCCC and IPCC, has been quicker to pick up on migration issues. This is a reflection of differing global governance contexts.

Box 3.5 Steps towards consensus Migration 2014 IOM is the first international organisation to establish an institutional unit on Migration, Environment and Climate Change 2014 IOM launched the Migrants in Countries in Crisis (MICIC) Initiative 2016 New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants 2016 IOM becomes Related Organization of the UN 2017 Preparatory work on Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration

Sustainable development The year 2015 was a fertile year for global agreements with COP21 on climate change, the Sendai Framework on DRR and the adoption, at the UN Sustainable Development Summit, of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.165 For some (e.g. Nash 2017),166 the climate-related mobility

Emerging global consensus 63 debate has focused too much on the UNFCCC ‘at the expense of other policy making processes [such as] the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) [which did not receive] . . . a particularly high degree of attention from actors working on climate change and migration’. Mihr (2017)167 describes the SDGs as ‘of similar importance [to COP21] for the concept of climate justice’. The IOM, in its analysis of the SDGs,168 highlights that ‘[m]igration is included for the first time in the global development framework’. States’ recognition of the contribution migration can make to sustainable development is, as Betts and Kainz (2017)169 describe, ‘a paradigm shift’. The IOM analysis shows clearly that references to migration are scattered widely across the 17 SDGs but cover a range of policy issues not closely linked to climate-related mobility, such as student mobility, trafficking and universal health coverage.170 However, analysis by the ODI (2016) shows that SDG Target 13, ‘Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts’, does not mention migration or displacement171 and, where migration is mentioned in other SDGs, the link with climate change is not made. Perhaps the most significant impact of the SDGs on climate-related mobility may prove to be via SDG13’s highlighting of global finance for climate change actions. Climate-related mobility has not so far been a global funding priority,172 but SDG13’s progress updates173 will shine a spotlight both on the developed world’s financial support for climate change actions and the developing world’s implementation of national adaptation plans in response to climate change. As ODI acknowledges,174 ‘[m]igration will affect progress on SDG13’, but the problem for policy and programme makers is the uncertainty surrounding migration. Overall, we see that neither international human rights frameworks nor development plans and programmes fit comfortably with climate-related mobility, justifiably because climate-related mobility is difficult to define and forecast; hence the attraction of Nansen-type initiatives focusing on bottom-up, regionally varied best practice solutions.

Box 3.6 Steps towards consensus Sustainable development 2015 UN Agenda for Sustainable Development 2030 – migration included for the first time in the SDG global development framework, though not specifically in the climate change Target 13

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Notes 1 Susan F Martin, ‘Environmental Change and Migration: Legal and Political Frameworks’ (2012) 30(6) Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy 1045–1060. 2 Teresa Thorp, ‘Transitional Law in the Climate Change Context’ in Dimitra Manou et al. (eds), Climate Change, Migration and Human Rights: Law and Policy Perspectives (Routledge, 2017) 78. 3 Satvindar Nagra, ‘The Oslo Principles and Climate Change Displacement: Missed Opportunity or Misplaced Expectations?’ (2017) 2 Carbon & Climate Law Review (CCLR) 126. 4 Rina Kuusipalo, ‘Exiled by Emissions – Climate Change Related Displacement and Migration in International Law: Gaps in Global Governance and the Role of the UN Climate Convention’ (2017) 18 Vermont Journal of Environmental Law 614, 628. 5 UN OCHA, Guiding Principles on International Displacement . 6 Walter Kälin, ‘Climate Change Induced Displacement – A Challenge for International Law’ (Distinguished Lecture Series 3, Mahanirban Calcutta Research Group (MCRG), 2011) 9. 7 The Center For International Environmental Law (CIEL), ‘Climate Change & Human Rights: A Primer’ (CIEL, 2014) 8 Koko Warner, ‘Legal and Protection Policy Research Series, Climate Change Induced Displacement: Adaptation Policy in the Context of the UNFCCC Climate Negotiations’ (UNHCR, 2011) 7. 9 Koko Warner, ‘Human Migration and Displacement in the Context of Adaptation to Climate Change: The Cancún Adaptation Framework and Potential for Future Action’ (2012) 30 (6) Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy 1061–1077. 10 The Cancún Agreements: Outcome of the Work of the Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-term Cooperative Action under the Convention. FCCC Dec 1/CP.16, UNFCCC, 16th Session, UN Doc FCCC/CP/2010/7/Add.1 (15 March 2011) at para 14(f).

11 See Frank Biermann and Ingrid Boas, ‘Preparing for a Warmer World: Towards a Global Governance System to Protect Climate Refugees’ (2010) 10(1) Global Environmental Politics 61, 62–63. 12 See IPCC website 13 IPCC, ‘The IPCC Impacts Assessment’ Report prepared for IPCC by Working Group II (IPCC, 1990). 14 IPCC, Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability: Assessing and Managing the Risks of Climate Change, Working Group II, 5th Assessment Report (AR5), IPCC, 3 15 Elizabeth Ferris and Jonas Bergmann, ‘Soft Law, Migration and Climate Change Governance’ (2017) 8 (1) Journal of Human Rights and the Environment 6, 22. 16 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), 9 May 1992, 1771 U.N.T.S. 107, entered into force 21 March 1994, recitals 8 and 9. 17 Kuusipalo, (n 4) 636.

Emerging global consensus 65 18 UNFCCC, (n 16) at art 2. 19 Elisa Fornale and Curtis Doebbler, ‘UNHCR and Protection and Assistance for the Victims of Climate Change’ (2017) 183 (4) The Geographical Journal 329, 330. 20 Koko Warner, ‘Coordinated Approaches to Large-scale Movements of People: Contributions of the Paris Agreement and the Global Compacts for Migration and on Refugees, Population and Environment’ (2018) 39 Population and Environment 384, 389. 21 Warner, (n 20) 389. 22 Kuusipalo, (n 4) 636. 23 Warner, (n 20) 389. 24 Lauren Nishimura, ‘“Climate Change Migrants”: Impediments to a Protection Framework and the Need to Incorporate Migration into Climate Change Adaptation Strategies’ (2015) 27 (1) International Journal of Refugee Law 1, 8. 25 Warner, (n 20) 388. 26 Sarah L. Nash, ‘From Cancun to Paris: An Era of Policy Making on Climate Change and Migration’ (2018) 9 (1) Global Policy 53, 56. 27 Ferris and Bergmann, (n 15) 22. 28 Paragraph 14(f) of UNFCCC COP Dec. 1/CP.16 (2010). 29 Paragraph 7(a)(vi) of UNFCCC COP Dec. 3/CP.18 (2012). 30 Fornale and Doebbler, (n 19) 330. 31 UNFCCC, COP 13 Sessions 32 Warner, (n 20) 389. 33 Koko Warner, ‘Climate Change Induced Displacement: Adaptation Policy in the Context of the UNFCCC Climate Negotiations’ (UNHCR, 2011) 7. 34 Ibid. at 8. 35 Ibid. 36 Nash, (n 26) 60. 37 2010 UN Climate Change Conference in Cancun, Mexico, 29 November–10 December 2010, Report of the Conference of the Parties on its Sixteenth Session, Addendum – Part Two: Action Taken by the Conference of the Parties at its Sixteenth Session UNFCCC, note 36. 38 Warner, (n 20) 389. 39 Susan F. Martin, ‘Environmental Change and Human Mobility: Trends, Law and Policy’ (2017) 42 Comparative Population Studies 187, 193; Xing-Yin Ni, ‘A Nation Going Under: Legal Protection for Climate Change Refugees’ (2015) 38 Boston College International and Comparative Law Review 329, 361. 40 Jane McAdam and Marc Limon, ‘Human Rights, Climate Change and Crossborder Displacement: the Role of the International Human Rights Community in Contributing to Effective and Just Solutions’ (Policy Report, Universal Rights Group, 2015) 8 41 Jane McAdam, ‘Creating New Norms on Climate Change, Natural Disasters and Displacement: International Developments 2010–2013’ (2014) 29 Refuge 13. 42 Nash, (n 26) 60. 43 Martin, (n 39) 193; Ferris and Bergmann, (n 15) 22; Nash, (n 26) 57. 44 See Nash, (n 26) 57.

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45 Andrew Geddes et al., ‘The Implications for Governance of Migration Linked to Environmental Change: Key Findings and New Research Directions’ (2012) 30 Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy 1078–1082. 46 Warner, (n 9) 1061-1077. 47 Ferris and Bergmann, (n 15) 22. 48 See Jane McAdam, Climate Change: Forced Migration and International Law (Oxford University Press, 2012). 49 McAdam, Jane and Elizabeth Ferris. ‘Planned Relocations in the Context of Climate Change: Unpacking the Legal and Conceptual Issues, Jane (2015) Vol 4 Issue 1 Cambridge Journal of International and Comparative Law, 138, 155. 50 Nash, (n 26) 57. 51 See Nash, (n 26) 57; Ferris and Bergmann, (n 15) 22. 52 Ni, (n 39) 362. 53 McAdam and Ferris, (n 49) 155. 54 Ferris and Bergmann, (n 15) 22. 55 Nash, (n 26) 56. 56 International Organization for Migration (IOM). IOM Contributions to Global Climate Negotiations 22nd Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), IOM 57 Martin, (n 39) 188. 58 UNFCCC, Report of the Conference of the Parties on its eighteenth session, held in Doha from 26 November to 8 December 2012, FCCC/CP/2012/8/ Add.1, paragraph 7 (a) (VI), 28 February 2013 59 UNFCCC, 2013, 3/CP.18, paragraph 7(a)(vi). 60 Nash, (n 26) 56; Warner, (n 20) 389; Kuusipalo, (n 4) 636. 61 UNHCR, ‘Human Mobility in the Context of the Climate Change UNFCCCParis-COP21’ (UNHCR, 2015) 62 Nash, (n 26) 56. 63 McAdam and Limon, (n 40) 10. 64 Ferris and Bergmann, (n 15) 23. 65 Arthur Wyns, Dealing with Climate Migration: ‘What Matters are Our Actions’ (21 August 2017) The Ecologist 66 Warner, (n 20) 389; Ferris and Bergmann, Soft law, (n 15) 23. 67 UNFCCC, Report of the Executive Committee of the Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage associated with Climate Change Impacts, UNFCCC, FCCC/SB/2014/4 68 Nash, (n 26) 56. 69 Julia Kreienkamp and Lisa Vanhala, Climate Change Loss and Damage (29 March 2017) UCL Global Governance Institute, 6 70 UNFCCC, What is the Paris Agreement, United Nations Climate Change 71 Sumudu Atapattu, ‘Climate Change, Human Rights, and COP21: One Step Forward or Two Step Back or Vice Versa?’ (2016) 17(2) Georgetown Journal of International Affairs 48.

Emerging global consensus 67 72 UNHCR, (n 61). 73 Margaretha Wewerinke-Singh and Curtis Doebbler, ‘The Paris Agreement: Some Critical Reflections on Process and Substance’ (2016) 39(4) UNSW Law Journal, 1486, 1487; Robert N. Stavins and Robert C. Stowe (eds), The Paris Agreement and Beyond: International Climate Change Policy Post-2020 (Harvard Project on Climate Agreements, 2016) preface.; Centre for Climate and Energy Solutions, History of UN Climate Talks, C2ES . 74 Walter Kälin and Kelly Clements, High Commissioner’s Dialogue on Protection Challenges: Understanding and addressing root causes of displacement, UNHCR 16–17 December 2015, Palais des Nations, Geneva, Thematic session 2: Co-Chairs’ Summary, . 75 Paris Agreement (2015). After years of deadlocked international negotiations following the adoption of the Kyoto Protocol to the UNFCCC, the PA on climate change was adopted at the 21st Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC (COP21) and formally entered into force on 4 November 2016. This agreement, consisting of 29 articles and 16 preambular paragraphs, is a legally binding instrument (although with various non-binding elements) that seeks to enhance the implementation of the UNFCCC. Thus, although it is not perfect and not enough by itself to solve the climate crisis, the PA establishes a reinforced framework of action (on both mitigation and adaptation) that applies to all developed and developing countries and aims at strengthening the global response to the threat of climate change. On the PA see, for example, Daniel Bodansky, ‘The Paris Climate Change Agreement: A New Hope?’ (2016) 110 (2) American Journal of International Law 288–319; Annalisa Savaresi, ‘The Paris Agreement: A New Beginning?’ (2016) 34 (1) Journal of Energy and Natural Resources Law 16–26. 76 Fornale and Doebbler, (n 19) 330. 77 Kristin Lambert, ‘The Paris Agreement: Spotlight on Climate Migrants’ Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies (F&ES Blog, 2015) 78 UNFCCC, Conference of the Parties, Twenty-first session, Paris, 30 November to 11 December 2015, FCCC/CP/2015/L.9/Rev.1, 12 December 2015, 1

79 Ibid., 7.; Paris Agreement, Para 50. 80 Atapattu (n 71) 51. 81 Alex Randall, ‘After the COP 22 Climate Talks: What now for Climate Change and Migration?’ The Climate and Migration Coalition, webinar (1 December 2016). 82 Dina Ionesco, COP21 Paris Agreement: A Stepping Stone for Climate Migrants (23 December 2015) IOM 83 IDMC-NRC, Seizing the Momentum: Displacement on the Global Climate Change Agenda (2 November 2016) IDMC Briefing Paper 84 Lambert, (n 77). 85 Emily Wilkinson et al., ‘Climate-induced Migration and Displacement: Closing the Policy Gap’ (Overseas Development Institute (ODI) Briefing Papers, 2016) 8. 86 Phillip Dane Warren, ‘Forced Migration After Paris COP21: Evaluating the “Climate Change Displacement Coordination Facility”’ (2016) 116 (8) Columbia Law Review 2103, 2106.

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87 Ferris and Bergmann, (n 15) 6–29, 23. 88 Decision -/CP.22, Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage associated with Climate Change 89 Kreienkamp and Vanhala, (n 69) 9. 90 UNHCR, Analysis of UNFCCC COP22 (Marrakech, Morocco, 7–18 November 2016) What are the COP22 outcomes that are relevant to the displacement issue?, UNHCR 91 UNFCCC, Marrakech Action Proclamation for our Climate and Sustainable Development, UNFCCC 92 UNFCCC, Task Force on Displacement, Handbook, First meeting of the Task Force, 18–19 May 2017, Bonn, Germany, UNFCCC 93 UNFCCC, Task Force on Displacement 94 UNFCCC, 2018 Talanoa Dialogue Platform, United Nations Climate Change

95 McAdam, (n 48) 256. 96 UNHCR, Key Messages – COP23, UNHCR 97 Nazhat Shameem Khan, Permanent Representative of Fiji to the UN Office at Geneva, 108th IOM Council: High-Level Panel Discussion on Opportunities to Address Migration and Climate Change in the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (30 November 2017), Environmental Migration Portal 98 Kuusipalo, (n 4) 641. 99 Warner, (n 20) 388. 100 Anja Mihr, ‘Climate Justice, Migration and Human Rights’ in Dimitra Manou et al. (eds), Climate Change, Migration and Human Rights: Law and Policy Perspectives (Routledge, 2017) 45. 101 Dimitra Manou and Anja Mihr, ‘Climate Change, Migration and Human Rights’ in Dimitra Manou et al. (eds), Climate Change, Migration and Human Rights: Law and Policy Perspectives (Routledge, 2017) 5. 102 UN, International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction, Report of the Secretary General, General Assembly, Fifty-fourth session. A/54/132/Add.1-E/ 1999/80/Add.1, 18 June 1999, 103 UNDRR, Yokahama Strategy for a Safer World: Guidelines for Natural Disaster Prevention, Preparedness and Mitigation and its plan of Action, 104 McAdam, (n 48) 243. 105 David Jackson, Effective Financial Mechanisms at the National and Local Level for Disaster Risk Reduction (Paper written for the mid-term review of the UNISDR Hyogo Framework for Action) (January 2011) UNISDR

Emerging global consensus 69 106 Walter Kälin, Sendai Framework: An Important Step Forward for People Displaced by Disasters (20 March 2015) Brookings Institution 107 UNDRR, Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030 108 Kälin, (n 106). 109 Lorenzo Guadagno, ‘Human Mobility in the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction’ (2016) 7 International Journal of Disaster Risk Science 30–40. 110 The Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030, 36(a)(vi), 23.

111 See The Nansen Initiative, 112 UNHCR, The Nansen Conference: Climate Change and Displacement in the 21st Century, 113 Jane McAdam, ‘From the Nansen Initiative to the Platform on Disaster Displacement: Shaping International Approaches to Climate Change, Disasters and Displacement’ (2016) 39 (4) UNSW Law Journal 1518–1546. 114 Kälin, Walter. ‘From the Nansen Principles to the Nansen Initiative’ (2012) 41 Forced Migration Review 48, 49. 115 Ibid. 116 McAdam, (n 113) 1522. 117 Kälin, (n 114). 118 UNHCR, (n 96). 119 Nash, (n 26). 120 Jane McAdam, ‘Climate Change: Should I Stay or Should I Go?’ (2017) 32 LSJ: Law Society of NSW Journal, extract from speech at the Mahla Pearlman Oration in the Federal Court of Australia, Sydney, on 9 March 2017. 121Elizabeth Ferris, ‘Governance and Climate Change-induced Mobility, International and Regional Frameworks’ in Dimitra Manou et al. (eds), Climate Change, Migration and Human Rights: Law and Policy Perspectives (Routledge, 2017) 25. 122 Platform on Disaster Displacement, ; Platform on Disaster Displacement, ‘Strategic Framework 2016–19’ 123 M. Saidou Hamani, Human Mobility in the Context of Climate Change, Natural Disasters, and Conflict, Expert Group Meeting on Affordable Housing and Social Protection Systems for All to Address Homelessness 22–24 May 2019, Nairobi, Kenya. 124 McAdam, (n 113) 1533. 125 McAdam and Limon, (n 40) 6. 126 Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), Human Rights and Climate Change, Resolution 7/23, 127 McAdam, (n 48) 220. 128 Malé Declaration on the Human Dimension of Global Climate Change, November 2007, . 129 UNFCCC, Party Groupings, United Nations Climate Change

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130 Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee for a Framework Convention on Climate Change, Working Group II (1991). Negotiation of a Framework Convention on Climate Change. Elements related to mechanisms. Vanuatu (on behalf of the Alliance of Small Island States): Draft annex relating to article 23 (insurance) for inclusion in the revised single text on elements relating to mechanisms (A/AC.237/WG. II/Misc.13), A/AC.237/WG.II/CRP.8. 5 131 OHCHR, Report on the Relationship between Climate Change and Human Rights, 18, UN Doc A/HRC/10/61 (15 January 2009) 132 McAdam and Limon (n 40) 18. 133 Ibid., 10. 134 Ibid., 20. 135 UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC), The Slow Onset Effects of Climate Change and Human Rights Protection for Cross-Border Migrants, A/HRC/37/ CRP.4, (22 March 2018) 136 Ibid., 10. 137UNHCR, ‘Climate Change, Natural Disasters and Human Displacement: a UNHCR Perspective’ (UNHCR, 2008) 138 McAdam, (n 41) 11. 139 McAdam, (n 113). 140 Kälin, (n 114) 49. 141 Giovanni Bettini, Sarah Louise Nash and Giovanna Gioli, ‘One Step Forward, Two Steps Back? The Fading Contours of (in)justice in Competing Discourses on Climate Migration’ (2017) 183 The Geographic Journal 348–358. 142 UNHCR, The Environment and Climate Change, Updated Version (October 2015) 143 UN, New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants, GA Res. A7Res/71/1, 6 October 2016 . 144 Global Compact on Refugees, UN Doc A/73/12 (2018) (hereinafter GCR). 145 UNHCR, Climate Change and Disaster Displacement in the Global Compact on Refugees, Website 146 International Organization for Migration (IOM), 147 McAdam, (n 48) 229. 148 IOM, MECC Infosheet 4 149 Ibid., 2. 150 IOM, 151 Alexander Betts and Lena Kainz, ‘The History of Global Migration Governance’ (Refugee Studies Centre RSC Working Paper Series 122, University of Oxford, 2017) 12. 152 Ibid., para 49, 10. 153 Klein Solomon, Michele and Colin Rajah, Moving to Action: Implementing the MICIC Guidelines (February 2017) MICIC Newsletter 6 154 Betts and Kainz (n 150) 9, 12.

Emerging global consensus 71 155 Ibid., 11. 156 Jane McAdam, ‘Introductory Note to Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration’ (2019) 58 American Journal of International Law 160, 161; Traore Chazalnoël, Mariam and Dina Ionesco, ‘Taking Stock of Environmental Dimensions in the GCM, as of 2 February 2018’ IOM 157UN, Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration, UN Doc. A/ RES/73/195 (19 December 2018) [hereinafter GCM] Objective 2, subparas h – l. 158 Ibid., para 43(b). 159 McAdam, (n 155) 161. 160 Dina Ionesco and Mariam Traore Chazalnoël, The Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (GCM), Perspectives on Environmental Migration, Environmental Migration Portal, 161 PDD, The Global Compact for Migration: A Breakthrough for Disasterdisplaced Persons and the Beginning of a Long Process, PDD 162 Ibid. 163 Jane McAdam, ‘Editorial: The Global Compacts on Refugees and Migration: A New Era for International Protection?’ (2018) 30 (4) International Journal of Refugee Law 571, 573. 164 Amy Lieberman, A ‘Super Framework’ for Climate Migration Isn’t on the Way (29 October 2019) Devex 165 UN, Transforming Our World: The 2020 Agenda for Sustainable World, Sustainable Development Knowledge Platform 166 Nash, (n 26). 167 Mihr, (n 100) 46. 168 IOM, 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development 169 Betts and Kainz, (n 150) 9. 170 UN, 171 Emily Wilkinson et al., ‘Climate Change, Migration and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development’ (ODI Briefing, 2016) 7 172 Ibid., 10. 173 UN, 174 Wilkinson et al., (n 167) 7.

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Malé Declaration on the Human Dimension of Global Climate Change, November 2007, viewed 12 January 2020, www.ciel.org/Publications/Male_Declaration_Nov07.pdf. Manou, D & Mihr, A 2017, ‘Climate Change, Migration and Human Rights’ in Dimitra Manou et al. (eds), Climate Change, Migration and Human Rights: Law and Policy Perspectives, Routledge, UK. Martin, S F 2012, ‘Environmental Change and Migration: Legal and Political Frameworks’ Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy, vol. 30, no. 6, pp. 1045–1060. Martin, S F 2017, ‘Environmental Change and Human Mobility: Trends, Law and Policy’ Comparative Population Studies, vol. 42, pp. 187–217. McAdam, J 2012, Climate Change: Forced Migration and International Law, Oxford University Press, Oxford. McAdam, J 2014, ‘Creating New Norms on Climate Change, Natural Disasters and Displacement: International Developments 2010–2013’ Refuge, vol. 29, pp. 11–26. McAdam, J 2016, ‘From the Nansen Initiative to the Platform on Disaster Displacement: Shaping International Approaches to Climate Change, Disasters and Displacement’ UNSW Law Journal, vol. 39, no. 4, pp. 1518–1546. McAdam, J 2017, ‘Climate Change: Should I Stay or Should I Go?’ LSJ: Law Society of NSW Journal, vol. 32, pp. 36–37. McAdam, J 2018, ‘Editorial: The Global Compacts on Refugees and Migration: A New Era for International Protection?’ International Journal of Refugee Law, vol. 30, no. 4, pp. 571–574. McAdam, J 2019, ‘Introductory Note to Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration’ American Journal of International Law, vol. 58, pp. 160–161. McAdam, J & Ferris, E 2015, ‘Planned Relocations in the Context of Climate Change: Unpacking the Legal and Conceptual Issues’ Cambridge Journal of International and Comparative Law, vol. 4, no. 1, pp. 137–166. McAdam, J & Limon, M 2015, Human Rights, Climate Change and Cross-border Displacement: the Role of the International Human Rights Community in Contributing to Effective and Just Solutions, Universal Rights Group, viewed 23 January 2020, www.universal-rights.org/urg-policy-reports/human-rights-climate-changeand-cross-border-displacement-the-role-of-the-international-human-rightscommunity-in-contributing-to-effective-and-just-solutions/ Mihr, A 2017, ‘Climate Justice, Migration and Human Rights’ in Dimitra Manou et al. (eds), Climate Change, Migration and Human Rights: Law and Policy Perspectives, Routledge, London, UK. Nagra, S 2017, ‘The Oslo Principles and Climate Change Displacement: Missed Opportunity or Misplaced Expectations?’ Carbon & Climate Law Review (CCLR), vol. 2, pp. 120–135. The Nansen Initiative, viewed 19 January 2020, www.nanseninitiative.org/secretariat/ Nash, S L 2018, ‘From Cancun to Paris: An Era of Policy Making on Climate Change and Migration’ Global Policy, vol. 9, no. 1, pp. 53–63. Ni, X 2015, ‘A Nation Going Under: Legal Protection for Climate Change Refugees’ Boston College International and Comparative Law Review, vol. 38, pp. 329–366.

Emerging global consensus 75 Nishimura, L 2015, ‘Climate Change Migrants: Impediments to a Protection Framework and the Need to Incorporate Migration into Climate Change Adaptation Strategies’ International Journal of Refugee Law, vol. 27, no. 1, pp. 107–134. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), Human Rights and Climate Change, Resolution 7/23, viewed 12 January 2020, http://ap.ohchr.org/ documents/E/HRC/resolutions/A_HRC_RES_7_23.pdf OHCHR 2009, Report on the Relationship between Climate Change and Human Rights, 18, UN Doc A/HRC/10/61 (15 January 2009), viewed 12 January 2020, https://documents-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/G09/103/44/PDF/ G0910344.pdf?OpenElement PDD, The Global Compact for Migration: A Breakthrough for Disaster-displaced Persons and the Beginning of a Long Process, PDD, viewed 23 March 2020, https://disasterdisplacement.org/staff-member/the-global-compact-for-migrationa-breakthrough-for-disaster-displaced-persons-and-the-beginning-of-a-longprocess Platform on Disaster Displacement, Strategic Framework 2016–19, viewed 12 January 2020, www.environmentalmigration.iom.int/sites/default/files/policy/PDD/ PDD%20-%20Strategic%20Framework%202016-2019%20%28FINAL%29.pdf Randall, A 2016, ‘After the COP 22 Climate Talks: What now for Climate Change and Migration?’ The Climate and Migration Coalition, webinar (1 December 2016). Savaresi, A 2016, ‘The Paris Agreement: A New Beginning?’ Journal of Energy and Natural Resources Law, vol. 34, no. 1, pp. 16–26. Solomon, M K & Rajah, C 2017, Moving to Action: Implementing the MICIC Guidelines (February 2017), MICIC Newsletter, viewed 23 June 2020, https:// micicinitiative.iom.int/sites/default/files/newsletter/document/micic_newsletter06_0.pdf Stavins, R N & Stowe, R C (eds.) 2016, The Paris Agreement and Beyond: International Climate Change Policy Post-2020, Harvard Project on Climate Agreements. Thorp, T 2017, ‘Transitional Law in the Climate Change Context’ in Dimitra Manou et al. (eds), Climate Change, Migration and Human Rights: Law and Policy Perspectives, Routledge, UK. UN, Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration, UN Doc. A/ RES/73/195 (19 December 2018). UN, International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction, Report of the Secretary General, General Assembly, Fifty-fourth session. A/54/132/Add.1-E/1999/80/ Add.1, 18 June 1999, viewed 19 January 2020, www.un.org/esa/documents/ ecosoc/docs/1999/e1999-80add1.htm UN, New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants, GA Res. A7Res/71/1, 6 October 2016, viewed 12 January 2020, www.un.org/en/development/desa/ population/migration/generalassembly/docs/globalcompact/A_RES_71_1.pdf UN, Transforming Our World: The 2020 Agenda for Sustainable World, Sustainable Development Knowledge Platform, viewed 23 March 2020, https:// sustainabledevelopment.un.org/post2015/transformingourworld

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UNDRR, Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030, viewed 19 January 2020, www.undrr.org/publication/sendai-framework-disaster-riskreduction-2015-2030 UNDRR, Yokahama Strategy for a Safer World: Guidelines for Natural Disaster Prevention, Preparedness and Mitigation and its plan of Action, viewed 19 January 2020, www.undrr.org/publication/yokohama-strategy-and-plan-action-saferworld-guidelines-natural-disaster-prevention UNFCCC 2010, UN Climate Change Conference in Cancun, Mexico, 29 November–10 December 2010, Report of the Conference of the Parties on its Sixteenth Session, Addendum – Part Two: Action Taken by the Conference of the Parties at its Sixteenth Session, UNFCCC, viewed 21 January 2019, http://unfccc.int/resource/ docs/2010/cop16/eng/07a01.pdf UNFCCC 2013, Report of the Conference of the Parties on its Eighteenth Session, held in Doha from 26 November to 8 December 2012, FCCC/CP/2012/8/Add.1, paragraph 7 (a) (VI), 28 February 2013, viewed 18 January 2020, https://unfccc. int/resource/docs/2012/cop18/eng/08a01.pdf UNFCCC 2014, Report of the Executive Committee of the Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage associated with Climate Change Impacts, UNFCCC, FCCC/SB/2014/4, UNFCCC, viewed 19 January 2020, http://unfccc. int/resource/docs/2014/sb/eng/0 UNFCCC, 2018 Talanoa Dialogue Platform, United Nations Climate Change, viewed 12 January 2020, https://talanoadialogue.com/what-is-talanoa%3F UNFCCC, Conference of the Parties, Twenty-first session, Paris, 30 November to 11 December 2015, FCCC/CP/2015/L.9/Rev.1, 12 December 2015, viewed 12 January 2020, https://unfccc.int/resource/docs/2015/cop21/eng/l09r01.pdf UNFCCC, COP 13 Sessions, UNFCCC, viewed 22 January 2018, https://unfccc. int/process-and-meetings/conferences/past-conferences/bali-climate-changeconference-december-2007/cop-13 UNFCCC, Decision -/CP.22, Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage associated with Climate Change, UNFCCC, viewed 12 January 2020, http:// unfccc.int/files/meetings/marrakech_nov_2016/application/pdf/auv_cop22_i7_ wim1.pdf UNFCCC, Marrakech Action Proclamation for our Climate and Sustainable Development, UNFCCC, viewed 12 January 2020, https://unfccc.int/files/meetings/ marrakech_nov_2016/application/pdf/marrakech_action_proclamation.pdf UNFCCC, Party Groupings, United Nations Climate Change, viewed 12 January 2020, https://unfccc.int/process/parties-non-party-stakeholders/parties/partygroupings UNFCCC, Task Force on Displacement, UNFCCC, viewed 12 January 2020, https://unfccc.int/process/bodies/constituted-bodies/executive-committee-of-thewarsaw-international-mechanism-for-loss-and-damage-wim-excom/sub-groups/ task-force-on-displacement/membership UNFCCC, Task Force on Displacement, Handbook, First meeting of the Task Force, 18–19 May 2017, Bonn, Germany, UNFCCC, viewed 12 January 2020, https:// unfccc.int/sites/default/files/tfd-handbook.pdf

Emerging global consensus 77 UNFCCC, What is the Paris Agreement, United Nations Climate Change, viewed 19 January 2020, https://unfccc.int/process-and-meetings/the-paris-agreement/ what-is-the-paris-agreement UNHCR 2008, Climate Change, Natural Disasters and Human Displacement: a UNHCR Perspective, UNHCR, viewed 12 January 2020, www.refworld.org/ docid/492bb6b92.html UNHCR 2015, The Environment and Climate Change, Updated Version, UNHCR, viewed 12 January 2020, www.unhcr.org/uk/540854f49 UNHCR 2015, Human Mobility in the Context of the Climate Change UNFCCCParis-COP21, UNHCR, viewed 18 January 2019, www.unhcr.org/uk/protection/ environment/565b21bd9/human-mobility-context-climate-change-unfccc-pariscop-21-recommendations.html UNHCR, Analysis of UNFCCC COP22 (Marrakech, Morocco, 7–18 November 2016) What are the COP22 outcomes that are relevant to the displacement issue?, UNHCR, viewed 12 January 2020, www.unhcr.org/5890abe27.pdf UNHCR, Climate Change and Disaster Displacement in the Global Compact on Refugees, UNHCR, viewed 12 January 2020, www.unhcr.org/en-au/protection/ environment/5c9e13297/climate-change-disaster-displacement-global-compactrefugees.html UNHCR, The Nansen Conference: Climate Change and Displacement in the 21st Century, UNHCR, viewed 19 January 2020, www.unhcr.org/4ea969729.pdf UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) 2018, The Slow Onset Effects of Climate Change and Human Rights Protection for Cross-Border Migrants, A/HRC/37/ CRP.4 (22 March 2018), viewed 12 January 2020, www.ohchr.org/Documents/ Issues/ClimateChange/SlowOnset/A_HRC_37_CRP_4.pdf UNISDR, The Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030, 36(a)(vi), 23, viewed 19 January 2020, www.unisdr.org/files/43291_sendaiframeworkfor drren.pdf UN OCHA, Guiding Principles on International Displacement, UNHCR, viewed 2 May 2018, www.unhcr.org/uk/protection/idps/43ce1cff2/guiding-principlesinternal-displacement.html Warner, K 2011, Legal and Protection Policy Research Series, Climate Change Induced Displacement: Adaptation Policy in the Context of the UNFCCC Climate Negotiations, UNHCR, Geneva. Warner, K 2012, ‘Human Migration and Displacement in the Context of Adaptation to Climate Change: The Cancún Adaptation Framework and Potential for Future Action’ Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy, vol. 30, no. 6, pp. 1061–1077. Warner, K 2018, ‘Coordinated Approaches to Large-scale Movements of People: Contributions of the Paris Agreement and the Global Compacts for Migration and on Refugees, Population and Environment’ Population and Environment, vol. 39, pp. 384–401. Warren, P D 2016, ‘Forced Migration After Paris COP21: Evaluating the “Climate Change Displacement Coordination Facility”’ Columbia Law Review, vol. 116, no. 8, pp. 2103–2144.

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Wewerinke-Singh, M & Doebbler, C (2016), ‘The Paris Agreement: Some Critical Reflections on Process and Substance’ UNSW Law Journal, vol. 39, no. 4, pp. 1486–1517. Wilkinson E et al. 2016, Climate Change, Migration and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, ODI Briefing, viewed 23 March 2020, www.odi.org/sites/ odi.org.uk/files/resource-documents/11144.pdf Wilkinson, E et al. 2016, Climate-induced Migration and Displacement: Closing the Policy Gap, Overseas Development Institute (ODI). Wyns, A 2017, ‘Dealing with Climate Migration: ‘What Matters are Our Actions’ The Ecologist, viewed 19 January 2020, https://theecologist.org/2017/aug/21/dealingclimate-migration-what-matters-are-our-actions?utm_content=bufferdcbb0&utm_ medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

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Positioning climate change and human mobility in this troubled world A global perspective on climate-related mobility demands some consideration of the wider state of human rights in today’s world. Sadly, there are plenty of grounds for pessimism. In mid-2020, COVID-19 has spread around the world with (at end of May 2020) around six million confirmed cases and 365,000 deaths.1 Conflicts persist in Syria, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Yemen, Afghanistan and elsewhere.2 In Syria, ‘five and a half million are registered refugees and over six million are internally displaced’.3 For some commentators, ‘western democracies (have in Syria) effectively undermined the UN charter, the humanitarian agencies, and international law’.4 Highlighting the 70th anniversary of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (the ‘yardstick by which we measure right and wrong’5), the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, acknowledged that ‘not all the promises of the Universal Declaration have been fulfilled’.6 In Myanmar, ‘The ethnic cleansing of Rohingya from Myanmar continues’, according to the UN Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights.7 The Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) confirms that, by the end of 2019, there were 50.8 million people living in internal displacement across the world, ‘45.7 million as a result of conflict and violence, and 5.1 million as a result of disasters’.8 This number has nearly doubled since 2000. Despite this troubled context, it remains acceptable to focus on climaterelated mobility because, as the IDMC 2020 report confirms, many more people were displaced by disasters than conflict; the total new displacements for conflict and violence is 8.5 million, and new displacements because of disasters are 24.9 million.9 Population movement because of disasters has gradually been increasing and remains a great challenge of our time.10 According to Jane McAdam (2017), ‘disaster-related displacement dwarfs the numbers forced out of their homes by conflict . . . a trend that’s likely to continue as the impacts of climate change increase’.11 The Global South continues to suffer the brunt of the disaster displacement problem. Looking at conflict and

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disasters together, the IDMC identified over 28 million new internal displacements in 2018.12 The global displacement problem is growing, and climaterelated mobility is an important factor in a global problem with many causes. The IDMC confirms that a substantial number of new internal displacements in 2019 had multiple causes.13 The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic poses a major additional risk to displaced people who may find it difficult to relocate to places where they can safely distance themselves from others.14

Evidence of increased recognition of climate-related mobility and some grounds for optimism The relationship between climate change and human mobility has been highlighted in a number of international reports and studies since 1990 when for the first time the First Assessment Report of IPCC warned the world about the implications of climate change on human migration. The need to address migration and displacement in the context of climate change has received ‘political recognition’ only over the last decade.15 Since 2010, we have witnessed an increasing willingness16 to consider climate-related mobility issues in ‘current global policy debates’ with an aim of developing ‘more coherent and comprehensive approaches’ to climate-related mobility.17 Many national policies have recognised the importance of human mobility as a result of climate change18 and illustrated that some states do have strong commitments to address the protection gaps.19 Climate-related mobility has been increasingly recognised in discussions at multiple international frameworks and processes.20 We noted that climate-related mobility issues were addressed in three important multilateral instruments in 2015: a) the Paris Agreement recognised the human rights of migrants and urged States to respect them when taking climate action;21 b) the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction acknowledged climate change as a driver of human mobility; and c) the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development called for climate action, as well as safe and regular migration. Also, the Human Rights Council in 2017 adopted a Resolution addressing the human rights of environmental migrants.22 At the end of 2018, there were three important developments led by the UN – the GCM, the GCR and the TFD within the UNFCCC which ‘will shape the future of migration and refugee governance in the twentyfirst century’.23 Specifically, the recommendations suggested by the TFD ‘to address, avert and minimize displacement in the context of climate change’ will play a catalyst role for future research and policy action on this issue.24 The GCM recognised the human migration in the context of climate change and extended commitments to support both climate migrants and States.25 We observe a pattern emerging of gradualist, voluntary, state-led initiatives (Nansen, MICIC and arguably Sendai, which, although a UN instrument, emphasises the State’s primary role in disaster risk reduction), identifying,

Concluding remarks 81 disseminating and implementing best practice and targeting sub-sets of the wide-ranging climate-related mobility subject area.26 For Ferris,27 ‘Making incremental progress in developing guidance with respect to specific groups of people might contribute in the long run to a more robust normative framework for others who migrate or are displaced because of the effects of climate change’.28 Nansen, Sendai, MICIC and other initiatives mentioned earlier may be seen as part of this concretisation process, a slow-moving but dynamic, step-by-step process of international policy development on climate-related mobility. It appears that climate-related mobility will continue having a strong presence in both multilateral and state-led initiatives and policy formulation such as the TFD and the work plan of the WIM.29 States’ increasing commitments to recognising human mobility impacts of climate change help achieve positive outcomes in other migration-related policy areas such as the New York Declaration, GCM and GCR. The 2016 Declaration and the Global Compacts on Migration and Refugees swim against the tide of the pessimistic, ‘troubled world’ perspective, ‘a step towards mending a broken system’, according to Chelsea Purvis (2018).30 It is too early to say whether the Compacts – GCM and GCR – will achieve lasting change, but the climate migration experts, Jane McAdam and Walter Kälin, when welcoming the recognition of environment/climate-related migration and cross-border displacement by the Compacts, stressed the need for ‘concrete action’ to materialise the objectives and commitments stated in the Compacts. Purvis (2018)31 acknowledges that the GCR is likely to focus coverage on those people covered by the 1951 Refugee Convention, which, as noted earlier, offers little or no protection to those facing climate-related mobility. Overall, great progress has been made in the last ten years. Although there are still substantial ‘protection gaps’32 at the legislative and policy level, there are also ‘grounds for cautious optimism’ because of states’ increasing engagement and positive commitment towards protection of climate-related migration and displacement.33

Emerging global consensus: reflections on three qualifications The case was made earlier that it is appropriate to examine climate change and human mobility even in these troubled times of persistent conflict across the globe. It is also appropriate to use the phrase ‘emerging global consensus’ on climate-related mobility but only with certain important qualifications. Three qualifications on the concept of emerging global consensus were introduced in Chapter 1. Firstly, if there is an emerging global consensus, it is a consensus being built on more than just the international, supranational level. Rather it is the stock of law, policies, programmes and initiatives accumulating internationally, nationally and locally. The inter-relation between

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our international institutions and national governments will remain a contentious issue (e.g. on the development of global migration governance, examined in Chapter 3). The main constraint, according to Betts and Kainz (2017), ‘has been states’ perception that an increase in global governance on this issue entails a decrease of state sovereignty’.34 The aim in this book is not to celebrate one of either the supranational or inter-governmental levels but, rather, to observe and note the two levels of governance combining to create an emerging global consensus on climate-related mobility. The second qualification is to acknowledge that we must examine the emergence of a global consensus on climate-related mobility with a longterm perspective and not put excessive emphasis on shorter-term developments, even when involving heads of state and government from large states who may implement abrupt policy and institutional changes. Not all discussions and agreements reached before the Paris COP21 Agreement, which came into effect in 2016, are outdated and, on the other hand, some current climate-related mobility institutional and policy priorities may not survive into the medium term. Some attention is, at the time of writing in 2020, focused on the Task Force on Displacement. By their nature, task forces are ad hoc, temporary creations. Some have lasting governance impacts, others none. Consideration of an emerging global consensus on climate-related mobility demands identification and recognition of long-term trends. The third qualification is to look for evidence of distinct policy areas and institutions coming together on climate-related mobility issues. It is a well-established point, as stated in Chapter 1, that the multifarious nature of climate-related mobility demands a multidisciplinary perspective. That is an easier point for an academic writer to make than it is for a national government or international institution to implement. Our international institutions can be the administrative equivalents of large ocean tankers, difficult to change direction. They are established by international treaties, governed by national governments and other powerful stakeholders and financed by taxpayers. Consideration of the international institutional response to climate-related mobility demands realism from academic commentators. This book identified ‘distinct worlds’, in particular those of human rights and climate change, coming together. Integrated policy-making and implementation is about more than creating new, stand-alone laws or institutions; just as, and sometimes more, effective can be the coming together of existing institutions and policies, the development of new soft laws, programmes and the basic human relations function of people from different backgrounds and organisations communicating and working together more. Marino and Ribot (2012)35 state that coordinated global action on climate change ‘has emerged to mitigate climate change, to gauge and map climate-related risks, and to plan for adaptation, which in turn has opened

Concluding remarks 83 new avenues of funding, power, knowledge and opportunity’. In this book, we have observed evolving, coordinated global action on climate change, including an emerging global consensus on climate-related mobility.

Confirming the emerging global consensus on climate-related mobility This book has addressed the question of whether a global consensus on climate-related mobility is emerging. Three qualifications were considered when examining the evidence: recognition that global consensus means more than just the supranational level; adoption of a long-term perspective; and scrutiny of the degree to which distinct policy areas and institutions have come together on climate-related mobility issues. We observed in each of the chosen policy fields that, for example: Climate Change • Cancún para 14(f) brought human rights and climate change together in one international agreement • The Advisory Group on Climate Change and Human Mobility36 and other organisations with discrete mandates increasingly worked together, including in the new Task Force on Displacement • UNHCR ‘Key Messages – COP23’37 highlighted UNHCR’s joint work with UNFCCC and others • The Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage Associated with Climate Change within the UNFCCC recognised migration as an adaptation strategy to climate change and called for approaches to CCDM Disaster • Successful inter-governmentalism via Nansen and the successor Platform initiatives went beyond ‘enhanced understanding’ of CCD towards the showcasing of practical, concrete solutions Human Rights • The 2007 Malé Declaration established first formal links between human rights and climate change • UNHRC aided the mainstreaming of human rights issues into global climate change policy-making via its 2018 report on ‘The Slow Onset Effects of Climate Change’38 Refugees • UNHCR 2015 overview report39 supported a bottom-up approach • Global Compacts on Refugees (GCR) Migrants • IOM long-standing facilitation role on global CCD initiatives • New York Declaration referenced the MICIC and Nansen Initiatives • GCM fully embraced CCD,40 including on ‘slow onset environmental degradation’41 SDGs • ‘Paradigm shift’,42 with migration’s first inclusion in the global development framework

2008

First UNHCR policy paper

UNHRC Resolution 7/23

2009

UNHRC Resolution 10/4

2010

Cancún COP16 para 14 (f): first reference to climate change displacement

Source: Mostafa Naser and Steve Pope

2011

UNHCR ‘global guiding framework’ failure

Figure 4.1 Emerging global consensus on climate-related mobility timeline 1: key milestones 2007–2012

2007

Sustainable Development

Migration

Refugees

Malé Declaration by the SIDS

Human Rights

Disaster

Climate Change

2012

Nansen Initiative launched

Doha COP18 para 7a (vi): second reference to climate change displacement

84 Concluding remarks

2014

Paris COP21 reference to ‘migrants’ in Preamble and creation of Climate Change Displacement Taskforce

2015

UN Agenda for Sustainable Development 2030 first inclusion of migration

Nansen Protection Agenda adopted by 109 States and Nansen closure

UN Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030 adopted

IOM set up first international organization unit on climate change migration and launched MICIC Initiative

IPCC 5th Assessment Report

Fiji COP23 first island state COP presidency progressed Paris rule book and established Talanoa Dialogue

Source: Mostafa Naser and Steve Pope

TFD Stakeholder meeting and draft recommendations for 2018 Katowice COP24

2016

New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants and IOM becomes Related Organization of the UN

New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants

2017

2018

Preparatory work and adoption of Global Compact on Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration

Preparatory work and adoption of Global Compact on Refugees

Platform on Disaster Displacement implementing Nansen recommendations

Marrakech COP22 set 2018 deadline to complete the Paris Agreement rule book

Figure 4.2 Emerging global consensus on climate-related mobility timeline 2: key milestones 2013–2018

2013

Sustainable Development

Migration

Refugees

Human Rights

Disaster

Warsaw COP19 established WIM for Loss and Damage associated with climate change

Climate Change

Concluding remarks 85

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This and the other evidence presented confirms the emergence of a global consensus on climate-related mobility with a growing international stock of laws (hard and soft), policies, programmes and other initiatives. One key word featuring in this book, ‘concrete’, signals how this consensus must develop in the years ahead. Concrete in policy and administration terms means so much more than hard infrastructure-type projects. It also has a less tangible but more important notion of actual implementation as intended. McAdam emphasised ‘problems on the ground requiring concrete solutions’.43 We observe a ‘concretisation process’, a slow-moving but dynamic, step-by-step process of international policy development on climate-related mobility. We finish this book with a timeline (Figures 4.1 and 4.2) summarising some key milestones in the development of this emerging global consensus on climate-related mobility.

Notes 1 Johns Hopkins University, COVID-19 Dashboard (as at 30 May 2020) 2 Jason Burke, ‘Why is the World at War?’ The Observer (UK, 4 March 2018) < www.theguardian.com/world/2018/mar/04/why-is-world-at-war-syriademocratic-republic-congo-yemen-afghanistan-ukraine> 3 Noor Al Hussein, ‘Foreword: Syria in 2018 – In Search of Solutions’ (2018) 57 Forced Migration Review 4. 4 Simon Tisdall, ‘The Epic Failure of Our Age: How the West Let Down Syria’ The Guardian (UK, 11 February 2018). 5 United Nations, Universal Declaration of Human Rights: Dignity and Justice for All of Us (12 February 2014) United Nations Publications, New York, United States 6 OHCHR, New Website Celebrates 70th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights 7 OHCHR, Myanmar: Senior UN human Rights Official Decries Continued Ethnic Cleansing in Rakhine State 8 IDMC-NRC, Global Report on Internal Displacement 2020 9 Ibid. 10 Amy Lieberman, A ‘Super Framework’ for Climate Migration Isn’t on the Way (29 October 2019) Devex citing Mariam Traore Chazalonel, a migration, environment and climate change specialist at the IOM. 11 Jane McAdam, ‘Climate Change: Should I Stay or Should I Go?’ (2017) 32 LSJ: Law Society of NSW Journal 37–39. 12 IDMC-NRC, (n 7) 5. 13 Ibid. 14 Susan F. Martin et al., Climate Change, Internal Displacement and Development: Submission to the UN High Panel on Internal Displacement, United Nations,

Concluding remarks 87 (May, 2020) 15 See IOM and OHRLLS, ‘Climate Change and Migration in Vulnerable Countries: A Snapshot of Least Developed Countries, Landlocked Developing Countries and Small Island Developing States’ (IOM, 2019) 7. 16 Xing-Yin Ni, ‘A Nation Going Under: Legal Protection for Climate Change Refugees’ (2015) 38 Boston College International and Comparative Law Review 329, 346; IOM and OHRLLS, (n 12) iii. 17 IOM and PDD, ‘Meeting Report of Task Force on Displacement Stakeholder Meeting “Recommendations for Integrated Approaches to Avert, Minimize and Address Displacement Related to the Adverse Impacts of Climate Change”’ 13. 18 IOM and OHRLLS, (n 12) iii. 19 Ni, (n 13) 346; IOM and OHRLLS, (n 12) iii. 20 World Bank Group, Groundswell – Preparing for Internal Climate Migration, report prepared by Kanta Kumari Rigaud et al., (World Bank Group, 2018) 2. 21 IOM and OHRLLS, (n 12) iii. 22 Ibid. 23 Koko Warner, ‘Coordinated Approaches to Large-scale Movements of People: Contributions of the Paris Agreement and the Global Compacts for Migration and on Refugees, Population and Environment’ (2018) 39 Population and Environment 384, 384–385. 24 IOM and OHRLLS, (n 12) 7. 25 IOM and OHRLLS, (n 12) iii. 26 See Susan F. Martin, ‘Environmental Change and Human Mobility: Trends, Law and Policy’ (2017) 42 Comparative Population Studies 187, 212. 27 Elizabeth Ferris, ‘Governance and Climate Change-induced Mobility, International and Regional Frameworks’ in Dimitra Manou et al. (eds), Climate Change, Migration and Human Rights: Law and Policy Perspectives (Routledge, 2017) 25. 28 Ibid. 29 Sarah L. Nash, ‘From Cancun to Paris: An Era of Policy Making on Climate Change and Migration’ (2018) 9 (1) Global Policy, 53, 61. 30 Chelsea Purvis, The Global Compact on Refugees: A Step Towards Mending a Broken System (22 January 2018) Oxford Human Rights Hub 31 Ibid. 32 Jane McAdam, ‘Building International Approaches to Climate Change, Disasters, and Displacement’ (2016) 33 The Windsor Yearbook of Access to Justice 1, 9. 33 Martin, (n 23) 212. 34Alexander Betts and Lena Kainz, ‘The History of Global Migration Governance’ (Refugee Studies Centre RSC Working Paper Series 122, University of Oxford, 2017) 1. 35 Elizabeth Marino and Jesse Ribot, ‘Special Issue Introduction: Adding Insult to Injury: Climate Change and the Inequities of Climate Intervention’ (2012) 22(2) Global Environmental Change 323–328. 36 UNHCR, ‘Human Mobility in the Context of the Climate Change UNFCCCParis-COP21’ (UNHCR, 2015)

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37 UNHCR, Key Messages - COP23, UNHCR 38 UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC), The Slow Onset Effects of Climate Change and Human Rights Protection for Cross-Border Migrants, A/HRC/37/ CRP.4, (22 March 2018) 39 UNHCR, The Environment and Climate Change, Updated Version (October 2015) 40 Traore Chazalnoël, Mariam and Dina Ionesco. ‘Taking Stock of Environmental Dimensions in the GCM, as of 2 February 2018’ IOM 41 UNHRC, (n 35). 42 Betts and Kainz, (n 31) 9. 43 Jane McAdam, Climate Change: Forced Migration and International Law (Oxford University Press, 2012) 220.

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Index

Note: Page numbers in italics indicate a figure on the corresponding page. Page numbers followed by ‘n’ indicate a note. Ad Hoc Working Group on Longterm Cooperative Action under the Convention (AWG-LCA) 43 Advisory Group on Climate Change and Human Mobility 45 African Union Kampala Convention on Internally Displaced Persons 31, 35n92 Al Hussein, Zeid Ra’ad 79 Alliance of Small Island States 56 Arab Network for Environment and Development 45 Atapattu, Sumudu 46 Bali Action Plan 42–43 Bergmann, Jonas 9, 44 Bettini, Giovanni 6 Betts, Alexander 60, 63, 82 Biermann, Frank 8, 26 Boas, Ingrid 8, 26 Brookings-LSE Project on Internal Displacement 5, 6 Brücker, Pauline 8 Cancún Adaptation Framework (CAF) 40, 43, 45 Centre for International Relations Studies, Sciences Po 45 climate change 40–41, 83; impacts of 1; international regime 41–42; UNFCCC climate negotiations 42–52 climate change, and human mobility 1–3, 79–80; argument of sceptics

3–4; as a discrete area of study 4–7; emerging global consensus on 9–11, 81–86, 84, 85; and environmental factors 4; internal displacement 6, 22, 23, 79, 80; inter-relation between international institutions and national governments 82; lack of widely recognised definition 7–9; long-term perspective on 11, 82; multidisciplinary perspective 82–83; recognition and grounds for optimism 80–81; variables 2 climate change migrants 8 climate displacement coordination facility 26 climate refugees 7–8, 21, 22, 23–24, 28, 58 complementary protection 24–25, 26 Conference of Parties (COP): 2007 42–43; 2008–2009 43; 2010 43–45, 52; 2012 45, 52; 2013–2014 46, 52; 2015 46–48, 52; 2016 48–49, 52; 2017 49–50, 52; 2018 52 Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT) 24–25 Cooper, Jessica B 21, 22 COVID-19 outbreak 79, 80 Dindoyal, Leal Kumar 5 disaster management 53–55, 83 disaster risk reduction (DRR) 53–55, 83 Docherty, Bonnie 8, 27

92

Index

‘Draft articles on the protection of persons in the event of disasters’ (UN) 30 El-Hinnawi, Essam 8 environment: and climate change 1; and climate-related mobility 4; and human rights 29–30 environmental displacement 8 environmental migration 8 environmental refugees 7–8, 21, 22, 23–24 Ferris, Elizabeth 9, 44, 54, 60, 81 Franck, Marine 2 Geddes, Andrew 44 Gemenne, François 5, 8, 10 Geneva Mandate on Disaster Reduction 53 Giannini, Tyler 8, 27 Gioli, Giovanna 6 Global Compact for Migration (GCM) 58, 60–62, 80–81 Global Compact on Refugees (GCR) 59, 80, 81 Guadagno, Lorenzo 53 Hodgkinson, David 27 Humanitarian Response Review process 29 human rights 6–7, 11, 40, 45, 55–57, 79, 83; international human rights law 6; international human rights regime 24–26, 29–30, 31; UNHRC Resolution 7/23 10, 57; UNHRC Resolution 10/4 10, 40, 57 Human Rights Committee 25 Hyogo Framework for Action 2005–2015, Building the Resilience of Nations and Communities to Disasters (HFA) 53 Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) 47 Inter-Agency Standing Committee Task Force on Climate Change (IASC) 40, 43 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 1–3, 5, 10, 41, 42, 80 internal displacement 6, 22, 23, 79, 80

Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) 48, 79, 80 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) 24, 25, 26 International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) 25 International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction (1990–1999) 53 international human rights law 6 International Law Commission 30 international law, recognition and protection in 20; complementary protection 24–25, 26; human rights 24–26; non-refoulement principle 24, 26; refugee law 21–24; separate treaty for protection of climaterelated migration and displacement 27–28; soft law development, normative framework 28–31; UNFCCC framework 26–27 International Organization for Migration (IOM) 3, 5, 59–60, 61, 62; and COP21 45, 48; definition of climate change migrants 8; Migration, Environment and Climate Change (MECC) Division 60; on SDGs 63 Kainz, Lena 60, 63, 82 Kälin, Walter 10, 40, 53, 62, 81 Kampala Convention see African Union Kampala Convention on Internally Displaced Persons Khan, Nazhat Shameem 50 Kreienkamp, Julia 46 Kyoto Protocol 41, 55 Kyung-wha Kang 29 Laczko, Frank 10 Limon, Marc 44, 45, 56 loss and damage 43, 45–46, 47 Malé Declaration on the Human Dimension of Global Climate Change 56, 57 Manou, Dimitra 6–7, 51 Marino, Elizabeth 82 Marrakech Action Proclamation 49 Martin, Susan F. 8, 39 McAdam, Jane 5–6, 28, 44, 45, 53, 55, 56, 62, 79–80, 81, 86

Index McLeman, Robert A. 4 Melde, Susanne 10 Migrants in Countries in Crisis (MICIC) Initiative 60, 80, 81 migration 8–9, 58, 59–63, 83; environmental migration 8; as a form of adaptation 44, 51; non-climatic factors of 4; and Paris Agreement 49; and SDGs 63; as a threat 51 Mihr, Anja 6–7, 11, 51, 63 Myanmar 79 Nansen Conference on Climate Change and Displacement (2011) 28, 31 Nansen Initiative 53–55, 60, 80, 81 Nansen Principles 31 Nansen Protection Agenda 55 Naser, Mostafa Mahmud 5 Nash, Sarah Louise 6, 44 natural resources, depletion of 4 New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants (2016) 58, 60, 81 non-refoulement principle 24, 26 Norwegian Refugee Council 45 Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) 10, 29, 56 Overseas Development Institute (ODI) 48, 63 Paris Agreement (PA) 9, 26–27, 46–48, 49, 50–51, 67n75, 80 persecution, and refugee status 22 Platform on Disaster Displacement (PDD) 55 Purvis, Chelsea 81 Randall, Alex 48 Refugee Convention (1951) 7, 20, 21–23, 24 refugees 57–59, 83; definition of 7–8, 21–23; displacement outside the country of origin 22; environmental/ climate refugees 7–8, 21, 22, 23–24, 28, 57; fear of persecution 21–22; international refugee law 7, 21–24; protection of government 22 Refugees International 45 Ribot, Jesse 82 right to life 26

93

Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030 29, 53, 54, 60, 62, 80, 81 Simperingham, Ezekiel 6 Slaughter, Anne-Marie 30 Small Island Developing States (SIDS) 55, 56 socio-economic rights 26 soft law 30–31, 35n92 Sphere Project, Humanitarian Charter and Minimum Standards in Disaster Response 29 sustainable development 62–63 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 63, 83 Syria 79 Talanoa Dialogue 50, 54 Task Force on Displacement (TFD) 49, 80, 81, 82 Thorp, Teresa 39 timeline, of global climate change consensus: 2007–2012 84; 2013–2018 85 Trump, Donald 49 UN Agenda for Sustainable Development 2030 62, 63, 80 UN Environment Programme (UNEP) 41 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) 9, 10, 20, 40, 41–42, 50–51, 63; COP13 (2007) 42–43; COP14 and COP15 (2008–2019) 43; COP16 (2010) 43–45, 52; COP18 (2012) 45, 52; COP19 and COP20 (2013–2014) 46, 52; COP21 (2015) 46–48, 52; COP22 (2016) 48–49, 52; COP23 (2017) 49–50, 52; COP24 (2018) 52; and human rights 56; and IOM 60; protection to climate-related mobility within 26–27 UN General Assembly 53, 58 UN Guiding Principles on IDPs 7, 29, 30, 31 UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) 40, 56, 80; Resolution 7/23 10, 57; Resolution 10/4 10, 40, 57 UN Inter-Agency Standing Committee, Guidelines on Human Rights and Natural Disasters 29

94

Index

UN International Office for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR) 5 UN International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR) 53 United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) 45 United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) 3, 8, 40, 45, 53, 57–60; on categorisation of refugees 23; ‘Key Messages – COP23’ 50 United Nations University Institute for Environment and Human Security 45 Universal Declaration of Human Rights 79 UN Sustainable Development Summit 62 Vanhala, Lisa 46

Warner, Koko 9, 40, 43 Warren, Phillip Dane 26 Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage associated with Climate Change (WIM) 41, 46, 48, 51, 52, 81 World Bank (WB) 2 World Meteorological Organization (WMO) 41 Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies 48 Yokahama Strategy for a Safer World, Guidelines for Natural Disaster Prevention, Preparedness and Mitigation 53