Study: Protecting Environmentally Displaced People

• Forschungsstelle: AFM
• Projektnummer: 532860
• Projekttitel Englisch: Study: Protecting Environmentally Displaced People

Schlüsselwörter (Englisch)

migration, climate change, legal protection, environmentally displaced people

Kurzbeschreibung (Englisch)

The current and potential environmental impacts of climate change and policies for mitiagtion and dadaptation raise a wide spectrum of human rights-based challenges. Amongst the most significant of these concerns are those pertaining to people who may be induced, or compelled, to migrate in response to changing environmental conditions resulting from extreme weather events and long-onset impacts such as rising sea-level and desertification. Supporting this research project on legal protection gaps with regard to environmentally displaced people is in line with the combined efforts currently undertaken by both the Political Division IV and the Office for Migration to further the knowledge base regarding the nexus between climate change and migration and to prepare the grounds for appropriate future action.

http://www.rsc.ox.ac.uk/  (Refugee Studies Centre, University of Oxford)

Projektziele (Englisch)

The study investigates the capacity of domestic, regional and international legal apparatus - based on norms of protection, human and civil rights, and human security - to support the needs of people vulnerable to environmental displacement induced by climate change. The overall aim of the study is to develop generic principles, guidelines and strategies in order to strengthen national government and civil society capacity for legal and normative rights protection for those who are forcibly displaced by the impacts of climate change.
Using an empirically-based, case study approach in "environmentally stressed" countries, the interlinked objectives of the research project are to investigate:

• the extent to which current legal and normative frameworks, at national, regioanl and international levels, afford effective protection to those who are forcibly displaced by the impacts of climate change on their environments;
• the scope for enhancing these frameworks;
• the measures needed to enhance the capacity of local and regional government, governance and civil society structures to protect the rights of the environmentally displaced;
• the means by which enhanced legal and normative frameworks and capacity may support adaptation and resilience strategies in order to avert potential population displacement;
• the potential for developing generic guidelines to enhance national level capabilities and responses.

Supporting this research project is in line with the combined efforts currently undertaken by both the Political Division IV and the Office for Migratoin to further the knowledge base regarding the nexus between climate change and migration and to prepare the grounds for appropriate future action.