No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
Environmentally Induced Displacement: When (Ecological) Vulnerability Turns into Resilience (and Asylum)
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 March 2024
Abstract
This article aims to reflect on ‘ecological vulnerability’ – which makes evident the relationship, flows and interactions between the human being/body and the environment/non-human world – as applied in the context of environmentally induced migration. In particular, the dual role of the law vis-à-vis environmentally displaced migrants as a generator and exacerbator of their vulnerability as well as potential antidote, valuable for attaining protection, will be highlighted. Namely, on one hand, the analysis will show how a lack of conceptualisation of the notion to understand the spatial and temporal patterns of climate change-related migration, as well as its consequences for societal well-being, contributes to generate and exacerbate the vulnerability of that category of migrants. On the other hand, the critical understanding of vulnerability, as developed in some recent legal reasoning of international and national jurisdictions, will be proposed as a key element for ensuring the resilience of both environmental migrants and the law itself, for both virtuously expanding traditional asylum norms and flexibilising access to international protection for those migrants.
- Type
- Special Issue Article
- Information
- International Journal of Law in Context , Volume 20 , Special Issue 1: Law, Migration and Vulnerability: From the Margins to the Centre , March 2024 , pp. 74 - 91
- Copyright
- © The Author(s) 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press
References
Anderson, A, Foster, M, Lambert, H, and McAdam, J (2019) Imminence in refugee and human rights law: a misplaced notion for international protection. International and Comparative Law Quarterly 68(1), 111–140.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Atapattu, S (2010) Human Rights Approaches to Climate Change: Challenges and Opportunities. London: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Ltd.Google Scholar
Baumgärtel, M (2020) Facing the Challenge of Migratory Vulnerability in the European Court of Human Rights. Netherlands Quarterly of Human Rights 38, 12–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baumgärtel Mand Ganty S (2024) On the Basis of Migratory Vulnerability: Activating Article 14 of the European Convention on Human Rights in the Context of Migration. International Journal of Law in Context. This Special Issue.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Beckett, A (2006) Citizenship and Vulnerability: Disability and Issues of Social and Political Engagement. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Behlert, B (2020) ASignificant Opening. On the HRC’s Groundbreaking First Ruling in the Case of a ‘Climate refugee’. Voelkerrechtsblog, 30 January 2020. Available at: https://voelkerrechtsblog.org/de/a-significant-opening/.Google Scholar
Behrmane, S and Kent, A (2020) The Teitiota Case and the Limitations of the Human Rights Framework, Questions of International Law 75, 25–39.Google Scholar
Bennet, J (2010) Vibrant Matter: APolitical Ecology of Thing. Durham/London: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Biermann, F and Boas, I (2007) Preparing for a Warmer World: Towards a Global Governance System to Protect Climate Refugees. Global Governance Working Paper No 33, November.Google Scholar
Biermann, F and Boas, I (2010) Preparing for a Warmer World: Towards a Global Governance System to Protect Climate Refugees. Global Environmental Politics 10(1), 60–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bronfenbrenner, U (1979) The Ecology of Human Development. Harvard: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Citroni, G (2020) Human Rights Committee’s decision on the case Ioane Teitiota v New Zealand: Landmark or will-o’-the-wisp for climate refugees? Questions of International Law 75, 1–5.Google Scholar
European Commission (2022) Communication from the commission to the european parliament, the council, the european economic and social committee and the committee of the regions on the Report on Migration and Asylum. COM (2022) 740 final.Google Scholar
Cooper, J (1998) Environmental Refugees: Meeting the Requirements of the Refugee Definition. NYU Environmental Law Journal 6(2), 480–529.Google Scholar
Costello, C and Foster, M (2016) Non-refoulement as Custom and Jus Cogens? Putting the Prohibition to the Test. Netherlands Yearbook of International Law 46, 273–327.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Costello, C (2015) ‘Defining Protection: Refugeehood, Non-Refoulement, and Human Rights’, The Human Rights of Migrants and Refugees in European Law (Oxford).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cullen, M (2020) The Un Human Rights Committee’s Recent Decision on Climate Displacement. Available at: https://www.asyluminsight.com.Google Scholar
Da Lomba, S (2014) Vulnerability, irregular migrants’ health-related rights and the ECtHR. European Journal of Health Law 21(4), 339–364.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Docherty, B and Giannini, T (2009) Confronting a rising tide: a proposal for a convention on climate change refugees. Harvard Environmental Law Review 33, 349–403.Google Scholar
Durieux, JF (2010) The Elusive War Refugee: Violence and Discrimination in the Construct of Refugees as a Legal Category, Refugee Studies Centre Lecture, University of Oxford, 10 November 2010.Google Scholar
El-Hinnawi, E (1985) Environmental Refugees. Nairobi: UN Environment Programme (UNEP).Google Scholar
Ellis, J (2019) Crisis, Resilience, and the Time of Law. Canadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence 32(2), 305–320.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
EU Commission (2016) Lives in dignity: From aid-dependence to self-reliance, COM(2016) 234 final, 26.4.2016.Google Scholar
EU Commission (2021), Forging a climate-resilient Europe - the new EU Strategy on Adaptation to Climate Change, COM(2021) 82 final, 24.2.2021.Google Scholar
EU Parliament (2011), Climate refugees. Legal and policy responses to environmentally induced migration, PE 462.422.Google Scholar
Fineman, M (2008) The Vulnerable Subject: Anchoring Equality in the Human Condition. Yale Journal of Law and Feminism 20, 1–23.Google Scholar
Fineman, M and Grear, A (eds) (2013) Vulnerability: Reflections on a New Ethical Foundation for Law and Politics. Farnham: Ashgate.Google Scholar
Fineman, MA (2015) Equality and Difference - The Restrained State. Emory Legal Studies Research Paper No. 15-348.Google Scholar
Flegar, V (2016) Vulnerability and the Principle of Non-refoulement in the European Court of Human Rights: Towards an Increased Scope of Protection for Persons Fleeing from Extreme Poverty? Contemporary Readings in Law and Social Justice 8(2),148–169.Google Scholar
Foster, M (2009) International Refugee Law and Socio-Economic. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Gonin, P and Lassailly-Jacob, V (2002) Les réfugiés de l’environnement. Revue Européenne de Migrations Internationales 18(2), 139–160.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goodin, R (1985) Protecting the Vulnerable: ARe-analysis of our Social Responsibilities. London: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Goodwin-Gill, G and McAdam, J (2007) The Refugee in International law. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Grant, E, Kotze, LJ and Morrow, KL (2013) Human Rights and the Environment: In Search of a New Relationship. Oñati Socio-Legal Series 3(5), 953–965.Google Scholar
Grear, A (2010) Redirecting Human Rights: Facing the Challenge of Corporate Legal Humanity. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grear, A (2011) ‘Sexing the Matrix’: Embodiment, Disembodiment and the Law. Towards the Re-Gendering of Legal Rationality? In Jones, J, Grear, A, Fenton, RA and Stevenson, K (eds), Gender, Sexualities and Law. Oxford/New York: Routledge, pp. 39–52.Google Scholar
Grundler, M (2024) ‘Route Causes’ and Consequences of Irregular (Re-)Migration: Vulnerability as an Indicator of Future Risk in Refugee Law. International Journal of Law in Context. This Special Issue.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harris, AP (2014) Vulnerability and Power in the Age of the Anthropocene. Washington and Lee Journal of Energy, Climate, and the Environment 9, 98–161.Google Scholar
Hathaway, JC (1991) The Law of Refugee Status. Toronto/Vancouver: Butterworths Canada Ltd.Google Scholar
Holling, CS (1973) Resilience and Stability of Ecological Systems. Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 4, 1–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hulme, M (2008) Commentary: Climate Refugees: Cause for a New Agreement? Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development 50(6), 50–54.Google Scholar
Humby, TC (2014) Law and Resilience: Mapping the Literature. Seattle Journal of Environmental Law 85, 89–90.Google Scholar
Imbert, L (2020) Premiers éclaircissements sur la protection internationale des «migrants climatiques». La Revue des droits de l’homme. Available at: https://journals.openedition.org/revdh/9262.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
International Law Association (ILA) (2022), International Law and Sea level rise. Report. Resolution 5/2018. Committee On International Law And Sea Level Rise, 19-24 August 2018. Available at: file:///D:/Downloads/Conference%20Resolution%20Sydney%202018%20English.pdf.36https://legal.un.org/ilc/guide/8_9.shtml.Google Scholar
Ippolito, F (2020) Struggling with climate change: environmental rights as children’s rights and the potential of an ‘hybrid’ nature of the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child. German Yearbook of International Law 63, 511–539.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ippolito, F (2022) The Best Interests of the Child: Another string to environmental and climate protection’ bow? Questions of International Law, 7–27.Google Scholar
Ippolito, F (2023) Children’s Environmental Rights under International and EU Law. The Changing Face of Fundamental Rights in Pursuit of Ecocentrism. The Hague: TMC Asser Press/Springer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jastram, K (2010) Economic harm as a basis for refugee status and the application of human rights law to the interpretation of economic persecution. In Simeon, JC (ed), Critical Issues in International Refugee Law: Strategies toward interpretative harmony. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Kälin, W (2010) Conceptualising Climate-Induced Displacement. In McAdam, J (ed), Climate Change and Displacement: Multidisciplinary Perspectives. Oxford: Hart Publishing.Google Scholar
Keane, D (2004) The Environmental Causes and Consequences of Migration: ASearch for the Meaning of “Environmental Refugees”. Georgetown International Environmental Law Review, 209.Google Scholar
Keck, M and Sakdapolrak, P (2013) What Is Social Resilience? Lessons Learned and Ways Forward. Erdkunde 67, 5–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kittay, E (1999) Love’s Labor: Essays on Women, Equality and Dependency. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Kozoll, C (2004) Poisoning the Well: Persecution, the Environment, and Refugee Status. Colorado Journal of International Environmental Law and Policy 15(2), 271–307.Google Scholar
Le Moli, G (2020) The Human Rights Committee, Environmental Protection and the Right to Life. International and Comparative Law Quarterly 69, 735–752.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Liguori A (2022) Cambiamento climatico e diritti umani dinanzi al Comitato dei diritti del fanciullo. La Comunità Internazionale LXXVII, 117–133.Google Scholar
Little, I (2018) Out with the Old Approach: ACall to Take Socio- Economic Rights Seriously in Refugee Status Determination. New Zealand Yearbook of International Law 16, 145–173.Google Scholar
Lotz, M (2016) Vulnerability and Resilience: ACritical Nexus. Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics 37, 45–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Luna, F (2009) Elucidating the Concept of Vulnerability: Layers not Labels. International Journal of Feminist Approaches to Bioethics 2, 121–139.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mackenzie, C Rogers Wand Dodds S (2014) Introduction: What is Vulnerability and Why Does It Matter for Moral Theory? In Mackenzie C, RogersW and Dodds S(eds), Vulnerability: New Essays in Ethics and Feminist Philosophy. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 1–32.Google Scholar
Maneggia, A (2022) Quale protezione per i migranti climatici? Considerazioni sul caso Teitiota
. Liber Amicorum Sergio Marchisio. Il diritto della comunità internazionale tra caratteristiche strutturali e tendenze innovative. Naples: Editoriale Scientifica, pp. 1507–1520.Google Scholar
Marchegiani, M (2022) The implications of sea-level rise for international law. Questions of International Law, 1–4.Google Scholar
McAdam, J (2011) Climate Change Displacement and International Law: Complementary Protection Standards. UNHCR Legal and Protection Policy Research Series. Available at: https://www.unhcr.org/4dff16e99.pdf.Google Scholar
McAdam, J (2011) Swimming Against The Tide: Why AClimate Change Displacement Treaty Is Not The Answer. International Journal of Refugee Law 23(1), 2–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McAdam, J (2020) Climate Refugees Cannot Be Forced Back Home. The Sydney Morning Herald, 20 January. Available at: https://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/climate-refugees-cannot-be-forced-back-home-20200119-p53sp4.html.Google Scholar
McAdam, J (2020) Protecting People Displaced by the Impacts of Climate Change: The UN Human Rights Committee and the Principle of Non-refoulement. American Journal of International Law 114(4), 708–725.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McAdam, J (2009) Environmental Migration Governance. UNSW Law Research Paper No. 2009-1, Jane McAdam, ‘Environmental Migration’ in Alexander Betts (ed) Global Migration Governance (Oxford University Press, 2011).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McLeman, RA and Smit, B (2006) Migration as an adaptation to climate change. Climate Change 76, 31–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Menghistu, F (1985) The Satisfaction of Survival Requirements. In Ramcharan, BG (ed), The Right to Life in International Law. Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff.Google Scholar
Methmann, C and Oels, A (2015) From ‘fearing’ to ‘empowering’ climate refugees: Governing climate-induced migration in the name of resilience. Security Dialogue 46(1), 51–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moreno-Lax, V (2021) Intersectionality, Forced Migration and the Jus-generation of the Right to Flee: Theorising the Composite Entitlement to Leave to Escape Irreversible Harm, In Çali B, Bianku L and Motoc I (eds), Migration and the European Convention on Human Rights. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 43–84.Google Scholar
Moreno-Lax, V and Garlick, M (2015) The Qualification Directive. In Peers, S, Moreno-Lax, V, Garlick, M and Guild, E (eds), EU Immigration and Asylum Law, 2nd ed., Vol. 3. Leiden/Boston: Brill, pp. 65–210.Google Scholar
Moreno-Lax, V and Vavoula, N (2024) Vulnerability’s Legal Life: An Ambivalent Force of Migration Governance. International Journal of Law in Context. This Special Issue.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Myers, N and Kent, J (1995) Environmental Exodus: An Emergent Crisis in the Global Arena. Washington DC: Climate Institute.Google Scholar
Neal, M (2012) ‘Not Gods but Animals’: Human Dignity and Vulnerable Subjecthood. Liverpool Law Review 33, 177–200.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pachauri etal. (eds) (2014) Intergovernmental panel on climate change, climate change 2014 synthesis report: summary for policymakers. Available at: https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/AR5_SYR_FINAL_SPM.pdf.Google Scholar
Passarini, F (2022) Oltre il caso Teitiota: la tutela dei migranti ambientali nelle recenti pronunce della cassazione italiana, ADIM Blog, Analisi & Opinioni 5, 4–5.Google Scholar
Perch-Nielsen SBättig Mand Imboden D (2008) Exploring the link between climate change and migration. Climate Change 91, 375–393.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Peroni, L and Timmer, A (2013) Vulnerable Groups: The Promise of an Emerging Concept in European Human Rights Convention Law. International Journal of Constitutional Law 11, 1056–1085.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Perrini, F (2021) Il riconoscimento della protezione umanitaria in caso di disastri ambientali nel recente orientamento della Corte di Cassazione. Ordine internazionale e diritti umani 2, 349–362.Google Scholar
Pobjoy, JM (2017) The Child in International Refugee Law. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ramsay, P (2008) The Theory of Vulnerable Autonomy and the Legitimacy of the Civil Preventative Order. LSE Working Paper 1. LSE: London.Google Scholar
Reeh, G (2020) Climate Change in the Human Rights Committee. EJIL:Talk!, 18 February 2020. Available at: https://www.ejiltalk.org/climate-change-in-the-human-rights-committee/.Google Scholar
Rive, V (2020) Is an Enhanced Non-refoulement Regime under the ICCPR the Answer to Climate Change-related Human Mobility Challenges in the Pacific? Reflections on Teitiota v New Zealand in the Human Rights Committee, Questions of International Law 75, 7–24.Google Scholar
Ruhl, JB (2011) General Design Principles for Resilience and Adaptive Capacity in Legal Systems – With Applications to Climate Change Adaptation. North Carolina Law Review 89, 1373–1404.Google Scholar
Ruhl, JB et al. (2021) Resilience of Legal Systems. In Ungar, M (ed), Multisystemic Resilience. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Schefer, KN and Cottier, T (2015) Responsibility to Protect (R2P) and the Emerging Principle of Common Concern. In Hilpold P(ed), The Responsibility to Protect (R2P). ANew Paradigm of International Law?. Brill, pp. 123–142.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schloss, C (2021) Climate migrants – How German courts take the environment into account when considering non- refoulement. Völkerrechtsblog, 3 March 2021. Available at: https://voelkerrechtsblog.org/climate-migrants/.Google Scholar
Schmeidl, S (2001) Conflict and Forced Migration: AQuantitative Review, 1964–1995. In Zolberg, AR and Benda, P (eds), Global Migrants, Global Refugees: Problems and Solutions. New York/Oxford: Berghahn.Google Scholar
Scissa, C (2021) Migrazioni ambientali tra immobilismo normativo e dinamismo giurisprudenziale: Un’analisi di tre recenti pronunce. Quaderni Costituzionali 2, 7–8.Google Scholar
Scott, M (2019) Migration/Refugee Law (2018). Yearbook of International Disaster Law 1, 462–472.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shuetze, L (2020) AGroundbreaking Ruling on Climate Refugees Puts the World on Notice. The Spinoff. Available at: https://thespinoff.co.nz/society/23-01-2020/a-groundbreaking-ruling-on-climate-refugees-puts-the-world-on-notice.Google Scholar
Sommario, E (2021), When climate change and human rights meet: Abrief comment on the UN Human Rights Committee’s Teitiota decision. Questions of International Law 77, 51–65.Google Scholar
Tacoli, C (2009) Crisis or adaptation? Migration and climate change in a context of high mobility. Environment and Urbanisation 21(2), 513–525.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Traore Chazalnoele, M and Ionesco, D (2018) Advancing the global governance of climate migration through the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Global Compact on Migration. In Behrman, S and Kent, A (eds), ‘Climate Refugees’. Beyond the Legal Impasse? Routledge: London.Google Scholar
Tsourdi, E (2014) What Protection for Persons Fleeing Indiscriminate Violence? The Impact of the European Courts on the EU Subsidiary Protection Regime. In Cantor, D and Durieux, J-F (eds), Refuge from Inhumanity? War Refugees and International Humanitarian Law. Leiden: Brill/Nijhoff.Google Scholar
Turner, B (2006) Vulnerability and Human Rights. Pennsylvania State University Press: University Park.Google Scholar
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (2018) Addressing human rights protection gaps in the context of migration and displacement of persons across international borders resulting from the adverse effects of climate change and supporting the adaptation and mitigation plans of developing countries to bridge the protection gaps, UN Doc. A/HRC/38/21, 23 April 2018.Google Scholar