Abstract

This article expands our understanding of climate justice by demonstrating how racial subordination, environmental degradation, and the fossil fuel-based capitalist world economy are interrelated. It uses these insights to critique the emerging legal and policy responses to climate change-induced displacement and to examine alternative approaches emerging from climate-vulnerable states and peoples. The article argues that racialized communities all over the world have borne the brunt of carbon capitalism from cradle (extraction of fossil fuels) to grave (climate change) and that a race-conscious analysis of climate change and climate displacement can reveal the commonalities among seemingly distinct forms of oppression in order to forge the alliances necessary to achieve just and emancipatory outcomes.

Highlights

  • The spectre of dark-skinned migrants threatening national borders and bringing crime, disorder, and disease haunts public debates over climate change in Europe and the United States (Telford 2018)

  • While this definition includes internally displaced persons as well as those who migrate to countries in the South and the North, this article focuses on the obligations of the global North toward climate-displaced persons (CDPs) given its disproportionate contribution to climate change and its consequent legal and moral duty to address the problem

  • Drawing upon several principles of international environmental law, including common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities (CBDR-RC), the polluter pays principle, and the precautionary principle, a responsibility-based legal framework would emphasize the duty of highemitting states to prevent displacement by reducing their own greenhouse gas emissions and by providing climate-vulnerable states with the technical and financial resources for climate adaptation and disaster risk reduction

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Summary

Introduction

The spectre of dark-skinned migrants threatening national borders and bringing crime, disorder, and disease haunts public debates over climate change in Europe and the United States (Telford 2018). It applies these insights to the emerging legal responses to the plight of climate-displaced persons. For the purposes of this article, climate-displaced persons (CDPs) are those who are displaced (temporarily or permanently) within their own country of residence or cross national borders due to immediate or slow-onset climate change-related calamities such as sea level rise, drought and desertification While this definition includes internally displaced persons as well as those who migrate to countries in the South and the North, this article focuses on the obligations of the global North toward CDPs given its disproportionate contribution to climate change and its consequent legal and moral duty to address the problem. This section defines climate justice and examines the ways that race-conscious perspectives grounded in the coloniality of power can enhance our understanding of this concept

The Concept of Climate Justice
Racial Capitalism and the Anthropocene
Racial Capitalism and Climate Change
Climate Justice and the Paris Agreement
Legal and Policy Approaches to Climate Displacement
The National Security Response
The Humanitarian Response
The Migration Management Response
A Just Approach to Climate Displacement?
Findings
Conclusion
Full Text
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