Environmental Justice for Climate Refugees

Francesca Rosignoli is a Junior Global Horizons fellow at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study (SCAS) in Uppsala, Sweden.

Table of contents

1 ‘Climate refugees’: Towards the construction of a new subjectivity

1.1 Introduction

1.2 Methodology

1.3 Historical knowledge of struggles

1.3.1 The heterogeneity and multi-causality of climate-induced migration: empirical controversies

1.3.2 History of the terminological disputes

1.3.3 Competing for the future: The struggles of policymakers and the shift of nomenclature

1.4. The insurrection of knowledges. Legal categories in motion

1.5. Concluding remarks: Towards a decolonial environmental justice perspective

2. The unresolved legal dispute over the recognition of ‘Climate Refugees’

2.1 International Refugee Law. The history of the 1951 Refugee Convention

2.2 Regional Refugee Instruments: OAU Convention and Cartagena Declaration

2.3 Towards the Global Compacts on Refugees and Migration and beyond

2.4 Limits and possibilities of the Refugee Law Concepts

2.5 Looking for alternatives: The role of International human rights law and International environmental law

2.6 Ioane Teitiota v. New Zealand. A legal tipping point?

3. Legal proposals and ongoing initiatives to fill the legal gap

3.1 Three proposals for a new Universal Treaty

3.2 Regional- and local-based proposals: regional responses, bilateral agreements, or enhanced domestic immigration laws? The case of Finland, Sweden, and Italy

3.3 Beyond silos: connecting different international law regimes

3.4 Just a matter of extension?

3.5 Combining existing legal framework with new multilateral treaty and complementary measures

3.6 Nansen Initiative

3.7 Peninsula Principles

3.8 Migration with dignity

4. The justice dilemma. ‘Climate Refugees’ as a case of Environmental (in)Justice

4.1 What (Decolonial) Environmental Justice is and Why it matters for ‘Climate Refugees’

4.2 The Threefold Injustice of ‘Climate Refugees’: Coloniality of Power, Knowledge, and Being

4.2.1 The Coloniality of Power

4.2.2 The Coloniality of Knowledge

4.2.3 The Coloniality of Being

4.3 Decolonizing the refugeehood

4.4 Concluding remarks

5. Environmental justice for ‘Climate Refugees’: actors, instruments, and strategies

5.1Why non-state actors can ‘solve’ the justice dilemma

5.2 A toolkit for non-state actors: collective capabilities

5.3 Limitations and ways forward

5.4 Conclusion

Acknowledgements

End matter

Index