Climate Displacement and International Protection: Reassessing Refugee Status, Non-Refoulement, Mobility Pathways and Planned Relocation

Abstract

Climate change is increasingly connected with floods, cyclones, droughts, sea-level rise, salinization, loss of livelihoods and other conditions that affect human movement. International law, however, does not place all people displaced in these circumstances into one legal category. This article asks whether existing refugee and human-rights law gives adequate protection to people displaced because of climate change. It uses doctrinal and comparative methods and looks at protection through five functions: refugee recognition, protection against unlawful return, lawful admission and stay, rights-based internal displacement and planned relocation, and continuity of nationality or statehood where territory becomes seriously difficult to inhabit. The comparison covers Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, India and Pakistan, with Pacific practice used as an important example of slow-onset mobility and statehood questions. The study finds that the 1951 Refugee Convention can apply where climate-related conditions are connected with persecution, discrimination, conflict or another Convention element, but climate harm by itself will not normally satisfy Article 1A(2). Human-rights non-refoulement, especially after Teitiota v. New Zealand, can provide another form of protection, although the test is highly fact-specific. Domestic humanitarian and migration mechanisms can provide additional routes. The Australia–Tuvalu Falepili Union is a useful example of a treaty-based mobility arrangement that also addresses continuing statehood. Internal displacement and planned relocation remain mainly matters of domestic law, supported by international human-rights and soft-law standards. The article therefore argues that the problem is better understood as a chain of different legal protections rather than as the absence of one special “climate refugee” status. A useful framework should keep the Refugee Convention where it applies, improve non-refoulement procedures, develop lawful mobility routes, strengthen rights during internal displacement and relocation, and consider nationality and political continuity where climate change seriously threatens territory.