scholarly journals “Migration with Dignity”: Towards a New Zealand Response to Climate Change Displacement in the Pacific

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Harriet Farquhar

<p>The impacts of climate change threaten to cause the displacement of millions of people worldwide by the middle of this century. In spite of this looming crisis, international law provides insufficient protection to those who will be forced to migrate. In most cases, those who are displaced will fall outside of current protection frameworks. This paper examines why this protection deficit should be of particular concern to New Zealand, and it argues that there are significant incentives for New Zealand to develop a response to the issue of climate change displacement in the Pacific. The paper concludes that in order to ensure Pacific peoples are able to migrate with dignity, pre-emptive, voluntary migration schemes should be put in place to facilitate migration flows. These should build upon the current immigration framework, and include the extension of current permanent and temporary migration schemes, as well as the introduction of labour-training migration schemes.</p>

2015 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 29 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harriet Farquhar

The impacts of climate change threaten to cause the displacement of millions of people worldwide by the middle of this century. Despite this looming crisis, international law provides insufficient protection to those who will be forced to migrate. In most cases, those who are displaced will fall outside of current protection frameworks. This article examines why this protection deficit should be of particular concern to New Zealand, and argues that there are significant incentives for New Zealand to develop a response to the issue of climate change displacement in the Pacific. The article concludes that in order to ensure Pacific peoples are able to migrate with dignity, migration schemes which are pre-emptive and voluntary should be put in place to facilitate migration flows. These should build upon New Zealand's current immigration framework, and include the extension of current permanent and temporary migration schemes, as well as the introduction of labour-training migration schemes. 


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Harriet Farquhar

<p>The impacts of climate change threaten to cause the displacement of millions of people worldwide by the middle of this century. In spite of this looming crisis, international law provides insufficient protection to those who will be forced to migrate. In most cases, those who are displaced will fall outside of current protection frameworks. This paper examines why this protection deficit should be of particular concern to New Zealand, and it argues that there are significant incentives for New Zealand to develop a response to the issue of climate change displacement in the Pacific. The paper concludes that in order to ensure Pacific peoples are able to migrate with dignity, pre-emptive, voluntary migration schemes should be put in place to facilitate migration flows. These should build upon the current immigration framework, and include the extension of current permanent and temporary migration schemes, as well as the introduction of labour-training migration schemes.</p>


Climate Law ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 345-374 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maxine Burkett

It is plausible that the impacts of climate change will render certain nation-states uninhabitable before the close of the century. While this may be the fate of a small number of those nation-states most vulnerable to climate change, its implications for the evolution of statehood and international law in a “post-climate” regime is potentially seismic. I argue that to respond to the phenomenon of landless nationstates, international law could accommodate an entirely new category of international actors. I introduce the Nation Ex-Situ. Ex-situ nationhood is a status that allows for the continued existence of a sovereign state, afforded all of the rights and benefits of sovereignty amongst the family of states, in perpetuity. In practice this would require the creation of a government framework that could exercise authority over a diffuse people. I elaborate on earlier calls to use a political trusteeship system to provide the framework for an analogous structure. I seek to accomplish two quite different but intimately related tasks: first, to define and justify the recognition of deterritorialized nation-states, and, second, to explain the trusteeship arrangement that will undergird the ex-situ nation. In doing so, I introduce the notion of a post-climate era, in which the very structure of human systems—be they legal, economic, or socio-political—are irrevocably changed and ever-changing.


Author(s):  
Kenneth Keith

This concluding chapter discusses New Zealand’s interaction with international law, adopting a chronological approach which takes account of the increasing authority of New Zealand’s institutions since 1840, when British colonization began. Over this period, New Zealand has developed and diversified its international trading, political, and strategic relations with other states, and has experienced the broadening and deepening of international law which has responded to massive scientific, technical, environmental, and geopolitical developments. The chronological approach also helps to identify major changes in New Zealand’s positions on, and contributions to, international law. Also central are New Zealand’s geography and population. It was first settled by Polynesians and later populated by Europeans, mainly British, who began to arrive only 200 years ago. Now, New Zealand has a rapidly diversifying population, with increasing numbers of people relocating from the Pacific and Asia.


Author(s):  
Jane McAdam

This chapter examines the scope of existing international law to address ‘climate change-related displacement’, a term used to describe movement where the impacts of climate change affect mobility decisions in some way. It looks into the role of international refugee law, human rights law, and the law on statelessness in protecting people displaced by the impacts of climate change. The extent to which international law and international institutions respond to climate change-related movement and displacement depends upon: whether such movement is perceived as voluntary or forced; the nature of the trigger; whether international borders are crossed; the extent to which there are political incentives to characterize movement as linked to climate change or not; and whether movement is driven or aggravated by human factors, such as discrimination. The chapter also considers the extent to which existing principles on internal displacement provide normative and practical guidance.


Elem Sci Anth ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas A. Cradock-Henry ◽  
Paula Blackett ◽  
Justin Connolly ◽  
Bob Frame ◽  
Edmar Teixeira ◽  
...  

Adaptation pathways is an approach to identify, assess, and sequence climate change adaptation options over time, linking decisions to critical signals and triggers derived from scenarios of future conditions. However, conceptual differences in their development can hinder methodological advance and create a disconnect between those applying pathways approaches and the wider community of practitioners undertaking vulnerability, impacts, and adaptation assessments. Here, we contribute to close these gaps, advancing principles, and processes that may be used to guide the trajectory for adaptation pathways, without having to rely on data-rich or resource-intensive methods. To achieve this, concepts and practices from the broad pathways literature is combined with our own experience in developing adaptation pathways for primary industries facing the combined impacts of climate change and other, nonclimatic stressors. Each stage is guided by a goal and tools to facilitate discussions and produce feasible pathways. We illustrate the process with a case study from Hawke’s Bay, New Zealand, involving multiple data sources and methods in two catchments. Resulting guidelines and empirical examples are consistent with principles of adaptive management and planning and can provide a template for developing local-, regional- or issue-specific pathways elsewhere and enrich the diversity of vulnerability, impacts, and adaptation assessment practice.


Author(s):  
Harrison James

Chapter 9 addresses the impacts of climate change and ocean acidification on the marine environment and the extent to which international law has reacted to this emerging threat to the ecological integrity of the oceans. These issues are particularly challenging to regulate because of their wide-ranging causes and effects. This chapter, therefore, takes into account both how the global legal regime relating to climate change, including the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Paris Agreement, has taken into account the oceans, as well as how sectoral treaties dealing with specific maritime activities have addressed climate change and ocean acidification within their normative framework. In this latter respect, the chapter focuses on the global regulation of carbon emissions from shipping and the way in which the international community has responded to proposed carbon sequestration activities at sea, including sub-seabed storage and geo-engineering.


Author(s):  
Fanny Thornton

The book applies a justice framework to analysis of the actual and potential role of international law with respect to people on the move in the context of anthropogenic climate change. That people are affected by the impacts of climate change is no longer doubted, including with implications for the movement of people (migration, displacement, relocation, etc.). The book tackles unique questions concerning international responsibility for people movement arising from the inequities inherent to climate change. Corrective and distributive justice provide the analytical backbone. They are explored in a substantial theoretical chapter and then applied to subsequent contextual analysis. Corrective justice supports analysis as to whether people movement in the climate change context could be conceived or framed as harm, loss, or damage which is compensable under international law, either through fault-centred regimes or no-fault regimes (i.e., insurance). Distributive justice supports analysis as to whether such movement could be conceived or framed as a disproportionate burden, either for those faced with movement or those faced with sheltering people on the move, from which duties of redistribution may stem. The book contributes to the growing scholarship and analysis concerning international law or governance and people movement in response to climate change by investigating the bounds of the law where the phenomenon is viewed as one of (in)justice.


2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 171-193
Author(s):  
Miriam Cullen

The low-lying islands and atolls of the Pacific have been among the first places to experience the most severe impacts of anthropogenic climate change. Some of the affected islands are nation-states possessing the capacity to negotiate treaties and to directly participate in international forums such as the United Nations (UN). Others, however, are subnational jurisdictions, made up of people who live remote from the governing majority and yet are extremely vulnerable to national policy decisions, especially when it comes to climate change and its impacts. This article examines one potential avenue for redress for minority populations living in remote subnational jurisdictions where national policy on climate change arguably compromises their human rights: a communication to the UN Human Rights Committee (HRC). The article takes as its primary case study the people of the Torres Strait Islands, which form part of the state of Australia.


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