Cancelled Climate Change, Disasters and Human Mobility

Climate change is the defining challenge of the contemporary era. Sea level rise, drought, and more frequent and intense weather hazards, such as hurricanes, intense rainfall events and resultant damage from landslides, floods, soil salination etc, can have severe consequences for places and people ill-prepared for them. Individuals, families and households can face difficult decisions about whether they can move out of harm’s way, and if they can, when to leave and where to go. This course examines the contemporary issue of climate change and disaster and their impacts on human mobility from it’s a legal perspective, while taking account of the topic’s complexity outside the law.

Case studies of mobility in the context of climate-related impacts and disaster will be drawn from Greenland, island states and territories facing ocean inundation from sea level rise, flooding events in Europe, drought and intersections with armed conflict in Ethiopia, Somalia and Yemen, the situation in Haiti, and the 2022 Turkey earthquake, as well as other situations and events as they arise throughout the course.

The course will be cover the following questions and themes:

• Why is the term “climate refugee” problematic? Conceptualising climate change as a factor that is causing and impeding human mobility, both within and across borders.
• Examination of the nexus between climate change, armed conflict, and other push factors associated with human mobility, and the legal protections available under refugee law, and regional arrangements, depending on how mobility is classified, and by whom
• Legal responses to disasters, their prevention and response, and the intersection with human mobility including evacuation and planned relocation.
• The relevance of human rights law, with case studies before domestic and international courts and tribunals, including the application of the principle of non-refoulement in the context of climate change (Teitiota v New Zealand)
• Legal protections afforded to Indigenous Peoples, people with disabilities, and children, in the context of climate and disaster-related human mobility.
• The notion of “disappearing” states, statelessness and the relevance and application of the statelessness conventions
• The legal framework governing climate change where it is relevant to disaster risk reduction and climate-related human mobility, including the work of the Taskforce on Displacement and recent trends in climate change litigation under human rights regimes.
• Solutions available through legal frameworks, including options and methods for opening regular migration pathways, enhancing local resilience to climate related hazards through planning, property and human rights law, and the (im)possibility of a new international treaty.