Climate Change, Disasters, and the Refugee Convention

Abstract

On refugees and climate change, that most existential of refugee law topics, the literature proceeds apace, as needs must. One of its latest additions, Matthew Scott’s book stands out for its ambition and originality. It not only sets out a new approach to climate change and disaster-related refugee claims, but seeks to propose a significant ‘recalibration’ of the refugee definition for application to all types of claim. Raising serious, well-articulated challenges on virtually every page to prevailing thinking on the definition of refugee in article 1A(2) of the 1951 Refugee Convention, it represents a signal contribution to the field. Lack of protection for victims of climate change and disasters within the existing corpus of international treaty law is well documented, both for those within States and those who involuntarily migrate. The responses of those seeking to fill this gap have taken two main forms. One response is to discard the...