Climate Change, Human Rights and Forced Migration: Implications for International Law
Sumudu Atapattu, (Fall 2009) 27 Wisconsin International Law Journal 607.
This article focuses on one result of climate change: displacement and forced migration caused by climate change. As the IPCC noted in 1990, the greatest single impact of climate change could be on human migration – with millions of people displaced by shoreline erosion, coastal flooding, and agricultural disruption. This article identifies migration as an extreme form of adaptation, which in certain instances, is the only option available. This article also considers the challenges that forced migration caused by climate change poses for international law. It discusses the present international legal framework governing refugees and internally displaced persons and analyzes some of the proposals which have been advanced in relation to “environmentally displaced persons” and “climate refugees.”
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