Climate Change and Refugees: A Challenge to Legal Frameworks

The impacts of climate change are now widely recognised as a driver of forced migration. Much debate persists, however, as to whether existing legal frameworks can provide effective protection to those affected, especially those who are forced to cross borders to escape the danger. These arguments are closely linked to ones surrounding the terminology used to describe the phenomenon. This chapter contextualises these debates within a selection of key recent legal and policy developments, and attempts to unpick some of these questions and suggest ways forward, based on critical engagement with certain underlying premises of refugee, human rights, and environmental law.