Climate Change, Migration and Displacement Events at COP16

The United Nations Climate Change Conference starts tomorrow in Cancun and runs for two weeks. I am travelling right now where internet is limited so I will try my best keep the blog updated. I will be in Cancun during the second week to attend and cover a few of the related meetings. Below are […]

Refusing 'Refuge' in the Pacific: (De)Constructing Climate-Induced Displacement in International Law

Jane McAdam, Associate Professor, Faculty of Law, University of New South Wales, Australia; and Research Associate, Refugee Studies Centre, University of Oxford, published a paper that calls for a new international treaty for ‘climate refugees’ or ‘climate migrants’. Drawing in part on field work undertaken in Kiribati and Tuvalu, it examines some conceptual and pragmatic difficulties […]

Latest Round of the Climate Talks Update June 2010

Here is a quick update for those of you that are following the UNFCCC Climate Change Talks. The twelfth session of the AWG-KP and tenth session of the AWG-LCA took place from June 1-11 in Bonn. The meeting brought together representatives from 182 countries was attended by over 4,500 participants, including government delegates, representatives from […]

Towards a Soft Law Protection for "Distress Migrants"

“A complex range of often inter-related factors – including the environment and nature, conflict, and the international political economy – contribute to creating the imperatives and incentives for people to leave their countries and cross international borders”, writes Alexander Betts in *. All of these push factors, he argues, might not necessarily guarantee protective status […]

Event: Seminar on Environmental Migration and Climate Change

If you are located in or near the New York City area, there is a one-day public seminar on Environmentally Induced Migration and Climate Change at the UN Headquarters on April 20th. It is being put on by the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) as part of their Migration and Development seminar […]

Good News for Climate Change Migrants

(IRIN) December 11, 2009 – COPENHAGEN, After months of negotiations, the UN climate change talks in Copenhagen have good news for countries that might see hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people migrating or being displaced by climate change. For the first time the text dealing exclusively with adaptation to climate change – one […]