“Environmental migrants” to “climate refugees”: A new architecture of global governance for climate victims

This paper has threefold objective. Firstly, it presents existing conceptual unclarities about "climate refugees". Secondly, it discusses how such unclearities have downplayed the rights of the climate victims. Finally, it proposes a new architecture of a global governance of “climate refugee”. Environmentally induced migration is as old as human civilization, yet the issue of “climate refugees” got global attention only after Professor Myers’ (Oxford University) estimation of 200 million climate migrants by 2050. In this regards developed countries gave very cursory focus due to fundamental flaws in conceptualization of the term “climate refugees” as this term does not have any politico-legal ground in UN Convention on “refugees”. Only New Zealand accepts 75 Tuvaluans each year through Pacific Access Category. Sweden considers environmental migrants as a special category. Switzerland, Canada, and Malaysia temporarily suspended involuntary returns of failed asylum seekers to affected areas of 2004’s Tsunami. However, none of these countries make explicit reference to “climate refugees” for such liberal treatment. Finally, this paper concluded that there is no “home” for “climate refugees”, either literally or figuratively. Therefore, this paper has drawn a new architecture of the global governance of “climate refugees”.