Lawyers Call for Changes in International Law to Help ‘Climate Exiles’
CNSNews.com) – International law dealing with refugees should be amended to cover people affected by disasters attributed to climate change, environmental lawyers are arguing.
With the United Nations and others predicting upward of 200 million people being displaced by 2050 as a result of environmental changes, the London-based Foundation for International Environmental Law and Development (FIELD) says they will need help dealing with “statelessness and compensation.â€
“International refugee law focuses on those who are persecuted for political, racial or religious reasons,†the organization’s director, Joy Hyvarinen, said in a statement Thursday. “It was not designed for those who are left homeless by environmental pressures.â€
As advocacy groups focus on people – mostly inhabitants of low-lying islands or coastal areas – affected by the environment, terms like “climate refugees,†“climate exiles†and “environmental refugees†have become more commonly used in recent years.
Climatic events have long had an impact on vulnerable areas – records of summer monsoons displacing millions of people in South Asia go back centuries – but as concerns about “global warming†have grown, activists warn about rising sea levels, drought and other events they attribute to climate change.
UN lawyers gots to have their piece of the glo-bull-warming pie.
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