Climate change challenges the means of subsistence for many, particularly in the Global South. To respond to the challenges of climate change, countries increasingly resort to resettling those most affected by land erosion, heat, drought, floods, and the like. In this article, I investigate to what extent resettlement can compensate for the harm that climate-induced migration brings. The first harm I identify is that to individual autonomy. I argue that climate change changes (...) the options of those affected by it to the point that the decision to migrate can no longer count as a voluntary one. In some cases, I argue, the conditions of climate change coerce individuals. Second, I suggest that climate-induced migration severs the ties to territory, explaining the constitutive nature of such ties for accounts of individual autonomy. Third, I argue that severing ties with a traditional and historical territory challenges the capacity to imagine a future for individuals. I conclude that resettlement, even if actively planned and chosen, possibly providing gains in individual well-being and human flourishing, nevertheless harms individual autonomy interests. (shrink)

Climate change intersecting with complex socio-economic and political processes has produced distinctive patterns of crisis migration. However there exists a significant gap in understanding and theorizing these forms of migration creating significant policy challenges. Using a case study of an interstate migrant settlement in Bengaluru, India this article unpacks migration as an adaptation strategy through the lens of emotions. The article offers significant insights into how emotions affect the choice of migration as an adaptation (...) strategy and shapes the differential experiences of risks and vulnerability for different groups of people. Emphasizing such relational aspects of migration, the article calls for more research that develops a nuanced understanding of the emotional landscapes of migrants across migration pathways. (shrink)

This paper examines the different discourses adopted concerning the climate change-migration nexus within the European Parliament (EP). It uses a critical discourse analysis approach to analyse a specific motion for resolution report, its amendments, and plenary debates, as well as an expert interview with the rapporteur to gain further insights into the political dynamics and challenges involved in the process. An own-initiative report is chosen for the analysis to reveal conflicting discourse-making processes between various political groups within (...) the EP and to better understand the role of the EP in the legislative branch of the European Union. It is found that political ideology plays an influential role. Even though political groups agree on the aims of the report, they constantly debate and use amendments to change content and extent. Therefore, we claimed that political discourses in a parliamentary setting should be analysed by specifically evaluating diagnostic, prognostic, and motivational arguments of discourses. (shrink)

Social scientific evidence suggests that labor migration can increase resilience to climate change. For that reason, some have recently advocated using labor migration policy as a tool for climate adaptation. This paper engages with the normative question of whether, and under what conditions, states may permissibly use labor migration policy as a tool for climate adaptation. I argue that states may use labor migration policy as a tool for climate adaptation and (...) may even have a duty to do so, subject to two moral constraints. First, states must also provide acceptable alternative options for adaptation so that the vulnerable are not forced to sacrifice their morally important interests in being able to remain where they are. Second, states may not impose restrictive terms on labor migrants to make accepting greater numbers less costly for themselves because doing so unfairly shifts the costs of adaptation onto the most vulnerable. (shrink)

Climate change has historically been an evolutionary determinant for our species, affecting both hominin evolutionary innovations and extinction rates, and the early waves of migration and expansion outside Africa. Today Homo sapiens has turned itself into a major geological force, able to cause a biodiversity crisis comparable to previous mass extinction events, shaping the Earth surface and impacting biogeochemical cycles and the climate at a global level. We argue that anthropogenically-driven climate change must be (...) understood in terms of a monumental niche construction process, generating long-term ecological inheritance and eco-evolutionary feedbacks that are putting our health and well-being and those of future generations at risk. We then list five major sources of climate change counter-intuitiveness, highlighting how evolved cognitive biases and heuristics may stand in the way of providing effective responses within tight deadlines. Drawing on our framing of the climate breakdown, we finally call for an evolutionary perspective in approaching the adaptive challenge posed by climate change: we argue that putting the brakes on a genuine self-endangering evolutionary trap ultimately depends on our counteractive niche constructing abilities, played at the level of our institutional and innovation capacity. (shrink)

Offers readers an alternative way of conceptualising humanism in relation to global change, one that draws in particular from black studies as opposed to one located in the ontological fold of European humanism.

This paper turns to pragmatism for strategies to assist with the timely implementation of conservation efforts, as it provides tools to unfreeze policy decision making so that stakeholders, from farmers to wildlife organizations, can readily address impacts associated with climate induced non-human migration. The first section of this essay introduces readers to the topic of climate induced migration and provides an overview of how agriculture could either inhibit or help facilitate migrating species. The second section then (...) applies Thompson’s analysis of water policy, specifically his triangular structure of libertarianism, utilitarianism, and egalitarianism, to the problem of non-human climate refugees to identify positions that could be taken, as producers, policy makers, and other stakeholders determine if they should adopt strategies to assist migrating species. This analysis ends with the argument that the field of applied ethics, while useful for identifying key policy positions, can provide little insight to stakeholders facing issues associated with climate induced migration. The final section of the paper turns to pragmatism for strategies that could help guide wildlife conservation decisions on the ground. It is the author’s hope that a wide range of readers will find this paper useful, as it brings together work in environmental ethics, wildlife conservation literature, and public policy. (shrink)

Anthropogenic climate change is a global process affecting the lives and well-being of millions of people now and countless number of people in the future. For humans, the consequences may include significant threats to food security globally and regionally, increased risks of from food-borne and water-borne as well as vector-borne diseases, increased displacement of people due migrations, increased risks of violent conflicts, slowed economic growth and poverty eradication, and the creation of new poverty traps. Principles of justice are (...) statements of what persons are owed either by others or by institutions and policies. Climate change gives rise to many concern of justice. This article briefly summarizes some of the most important of these, including claims to have climate change mitigated, claims regarding the sharing of the costs of climate change mitigation, claims for investment into adaptation, and claims to be compensated. (shrink)

Human migration has long been a type of adaptive response to climatic conditions and environmental pressures. However, anthropogenic climate change threatens to exacerbate vulnerabilities and impact adaptive capacity. Climate change impacts human mobility by way of long-term climate processes as well as sudden events whose intensity and frequency are exacerbated. Climate-related mobilities include the range of outcomes that result from climate change’s impacts on human mobility. The effects of climate (...) class='Hi'>change on human mobility are diverse. They include various types of movement, including movement within borders as well as external or cross-border movement. Such mobility outcomes also include various degrees of agency in whether people can choose to move. Furthermore, climate change can impact whether humans will move more or will move less. Instances of immobility also vary with regards to agency in decision making, with some populations choosing to stay in vulnerable locations while others may be “trapped.” Vulnerability and adaptive capacity under conditions of climate change depends on the interaction of climate impacts with political social, cultural, economic, and additional factors. The heterogeneity of climate-related mobility outcomes and the difficulty in determining the scale and scope of the impact on human well-being raises a number of practical and normative challenges. The chapter examines and compares a range of normative frameworks that address the moral problem of climate change’s impacts on human mobility. These approaches articulate the nature of the moral problem, identify the rights that are violated and the associated harms of displacement, and identify correlative obligations to those who are vulnerable to climate-related impacts. The chapter concludes by suggesting further directions normative theorizing about climate-related mobilities can take considering the complex challenges the phenomena poses for the international state system. (shrink)

Storm surges, flooding, heatwaves, and prolonged drought, as ever more regular features of life under deteriorating climate conditions, are unmistakably violent. Their effects on the lives of vulnerable human populations and ecosystems across the world are widely known to be devastating. Yet a legal order that denies the victims of such ecological persecution safe haven, no matter how great its use of force (e.g., detention, arrest, forced return) cannot, by definition, be violent. The power of law, used to protect (...) states’ rights to exclude from their jurisdictions growing numbers displaced involuntarily by global climate harms, in being a source of ‘legitimate right’, is never the same as violence. This article challenges the ongoing validity of this assumption. It points to some of the ways in which legal instruments are used today to deny those displaced by climatic conditions sufficient normative status to guarantee their safety. What is needed instead is a new critical normative understanding of the evolving relationship between climate change, violence, justice, and law, one that re-assesses the democratic justificatory grounds for the current positions of non-responsibility for the climate displaced whilst re-affirming such people’s legal and political status as equal co-members of the politically constituted international community of humanity. (shrink)

This 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 people movement (migration, displacement, relocation, etc.). Climate Change and People on the Move 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, and 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 re-distribution may stem. This book contributes to the growing scholarship and analysis concerning international law or governance and people movement in response to the impacts of climate change by investigating the bounds of the law where the phenomenon is viewed as one of (in)justice. (shrink)

We make the case that scientifically accurate and politically feasible responses to the climate crisis require a complex understanding of human cultural practices of niche construction that moves beyond the adaptive significance of culture. We develop this thesis in two related ways. First, we argue that cumulative cultural practices of niche construction can generate stable equilibria and runaway selection processes that result in long-term existential risks within and across cultural groups. We dub this the back of the invisible hand. (...) Second, we argue that the ability of cultural groups to innovate technological solutions to environmental problems is highly constrained in ways that are exacerbated by sustained intergroup conflict, inequality and by inherently unpredictable cascades in climate change and human migration patterns. After developing these theoretical points about human cultural practices of niche construction in detail, we conclude our discussion with some tentative practical suggestions about the way that cultural evolutionary history can more fruitfully be used in efforts to remit the climate crisis and contribute to sustainable practices of human climate change adaptation. (shrink)

Anthropogenic climate change is expected to contribute to mass migration from many different regions. Heyward and Ödalen (2016) propose a tailor-made migration option for victims of total territorial loss: a Free Movement Passport for the Territorially Dispossessed (PTD). The PTD presents a significant advancement over standard proposals for individual migration in response to total territorial loss. However, I argue that the compensatory obligations of states are more restrictive than the PTD scheme assumes (sec. 5), and (...) that the contents of the right to compensation of the territorially dispossessed are not as far-reaching as required by it (sec. 6). In response to these difficulties, I argue that its purpose is better served by means of collective migration and propose a Passport for Territorially Dispossessed Collectives, which is also well positioned to serve as a framework for compensating a range of other climate-change related losses (sec. 9). (shrink)

Despite growing recognition of the interconnectedness between climate change and modern slavery within supply chains, these issues are often studied in isolation, leading to a fragmented understanding of their relationship. This research aims to bridge this gap by investigating the key factors in supply chains that influence both climate change and modern slavery and how interactions among supply chain stakeholders impact the relationship between them. Utilising the PRISMA literature review method, we systematically reviewed 56 articles to (...) identify the underlying mechanisms and stakeholders' interactions that influence the dynamics between climate change and modern slavery in supply chains. Our findings culminate in a conceptual model that delineates 11 factors bi-directionally impacting both climate change and modern slavery. These factors include social (migration, violent conflict, and war as well as tradition and culture), environmental (deforestation, soil erosion, disruption of protected area, extreme weather, and resource) and economic (liabilities, employment, education, and pandemic). Furthermore, it highlights how stakeholder interactions at the government, NGO, supplier, focal firm, worker, and consumer levels impact this relationship. Finally, the model underscores the potential of technology adoption, sustainable development strategies, and stakeholder engagement and collaboration as levers to positively influence the relationship between climate change and modern slavery in supply chains. (shrink)

This paper sets out a research agenda for a political theory of climate displacement, by critically examining one prominent proposal—the idea of a normative status for ‘climate refugees’—and by proposing an alternative. Drawing on empirical work on climate displacement, I show that the concept of the climate refugee obscures the complexity and heterogeneity of climate displacement. I argue that, because of this complexity and heterogeneity, approaches to climate displacement that put the concept of the (...) climate refugee at their centre will fail to treat like cases alike and relevantly different cases differently. In response to these failings, I outline an alternative—the pluralist theory of climate displacement—which confronts the specific challenges that climate displacement poses in different practical and institutional contexts, whilst also treating climate displacement as a unified phenomenon at the second-order level of burden-sharing. (shrink)

Assisted migration (AM) is a translocation of the representatives of species to areas outside their natural habitats as a response to climate change. This article seeks to identify how customary norms and general principles of international environmental law could guide the development of regulation of AM maximizing the benefits of using AM and minimizing AM-related risks. Among the customary norms and principles of international environmental law discussed in the article and relevant to the regulation of AM are (...) the permanent sovereignty over natural resources, the principle of cooperation, the no-harm rule, the precautionary principle, the principles of prevention, due diligence, and obligation to conduct environmental impact assessment (EIA), the principles of integration and intergenerational equity, common but differentiated responsibilities, and the polluter pays principle, the principles of non-regression, progression, resilience, in dubio pro natura, the principle of ecological proportionality, and the principle of access to information, public participation, and access to justice in environmental matters (principle of good governance, environmental democracy). (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Der Islam Jahrgang: 93 Heft: 2 Seiten: 495-531.

This paper argues that climate migration-in case of climate refugees in a strict sense-differs from other forms of migration not only by its finality but also by the fact that entire communities are forced to resettle elsewhere. For such communities to migrate with dignity-that is in a way that protects the social bases of their self-respect-their host countries are required to ensure the necessary institutional arrangements enabling these people to become full and equal members within a (...) reasonably short time. Ensuring that their equal participation rights are not merely formal but have ‘fair value’ requires taking cultural differences into account to ensure that they do not pose substantial disadvantages for participation in the political and social sphere. (shrink)

Climate change threatens humanity more than anything else. If we talk of nationalism, we ought therefore consider its pros and cons in light of the climate emergency. Anatol Lieven believes that civic nationalism along the lines of Chaim Gans, David Miller, and Yuli Tamir helps combat global warming. He thinks that when nationalists recognize that climate change is just as threatening to the survival of their nation-state as wars, they will make the sacrifices necessary to (...) avert the threat. In this view, the military has an important role, and migration will have to be restricted. In this paper, I show that this solution is at best highly risky, and more probably unsound. However difficult it will be to realize, addressing climate change must be based on international cooperation, normatively grounded in human rights. I show how international law rather than civic nationalism gives us examples of how to go forward. (shrink)

Several philosophers have recently argued that policies aimed at reducing human fertility are a practical and morally justifiable way to mitigate the risk of dangerous climate change. There is a powerful objection to such “population engineering” proposals: even if drastic fertility reductions are needed to prevent dangerous climate change, implementing those reductions would wreak havoc on the global economy, which would seriously undermine international antipoverty efforts. In this article, we articulate this economic objection to population engineering (...) and show how it fails. We argue, first, that the economic objection paints an inaccurate picture of the complicated relationship between demographic change and economic growth, and second, that any untoward economic effects of fertility reduction can be mitigated with additional policies. Specifically, we argue that supplementing fertility reduction with policies that facilitate the emigration of younger people from developing nations to developed nations could allow for both global reductions in GHG emissions and continued economic stability. Further, we show that moral arguments against such unprecedented increases in immigration are unsuccessful. We conclude that population engineering is a practical and morally justifiable tool for addressing the twin evils of climate change and global poverty. (shrink)

Social and cultural contexts influence power dynamics and shape gender perceptions, roles, and decisions regarding the management of agrobiodiversity for dealing with and adapting to climate change. Based on a feminist political ecology framework and a mixed method approach, this research performs an empirical analysis of two case studies in the northern of India, one in the Himalayan Mountains and another in the Indian-Gangetic plains. It explores context-specific influence of gender roles and responsibilities on on-farm agrobiodiversity management gendered (...) expertise and knowledge related to agrobiodiversity and gendered preferences for practices and institutional arrangements for agrobiodiversity conservation linked to adaptation to climate change. In the Himalayan mountains women actively participate in crop and seed management decisions and tasks, and maintain informal institutions for seed and services exchanges in the case of crisis, which simultaneously favours high levels of agrobiodiversity and enhances women’s social status. By contrast, in the Indio-Gangetic plains, where women from better-off households are socially secluded and women from poorer households work mainly as labourer to respond to high out-migration of men, they exercise less public control over agrobiodiversity, with their role being mainly invisible at the homestead and related to post-production tasks. We finally discuss as improved understanding of the links between gendered spaces, crops, tasks, social status, and agrobiodiversity management can facilitate the design of gender-sensitive policy interventions for conservation and adaptation to climate change. (shrink)

Even though anthropogenic climate change is largely caused by industrialized nations, its burden is distributed unevenly with poor developing countries suffering the most. A common response to livelihood insecurities and destruction is migration. Using Peter Singer's ‘historical principle’, this paper argues that a morally just evaluation requires taking causality between climate change and migration under consideration. The historical principle is employed to emphasize shortcomings in commonly made philosophical arguments to oppose immigration. The article concludes (...) that none of these arguments is able to override the moral responsibility of industrialized countries to compensate for harms that their actions have caused. (shrink)

In responding to stimulating commentaries by David Owen, Shelley Wilcox, Tyler Paytas, Desiree Lim, and Lukas Schmid I develop my model of migration justice, showing how it has the resources needed not only to deal with these challenges but also to provide a fruitful approach to a full range of contemporary migration problems.

Plant ethics is a field of philosophy that discusses the moral value of plants, and individual responsibilities toward them. As anthropogenic climate change is likely to have devastating effects on plants, a plant ethics analysis of climate change is crucial to fully understand the extent of people’s responsibilities toward plants. However, surprisingly little has been written on this topic. This chapter aims to provide an overview of the main positions in plant ethics as well as an (...) initial exploration of the following three salient questions concerning plant ethics and climate change. First, how stringent are people’s responsibilities to preserve plants? Second, do people have responsibilities to plant trees? Third, do people have responsibilities to help plant migration? Plant ethics theories struggle to different extent with each of these questions. On all theories, people have great responsibilities to preserve, if not individual plants, at least large forests, and on most theories people have some responsibility to help plant migration. On whether there are responsibilities to plant trees, different plant ethics theories deliver widely different results, from there being no responsibility to plant any tree to there being responsibility to plant as many trees as possible. All three questions are venues for future research in plant ethics. (shrink)

Many individual sentient wild animals are vulnerable to anthropogenic climate change. In this article, I suggest that animal ethicists who take sentient animals’ moral status seriously are likely to agree that, other things being equal, we have moral responsibilities to assist wild animals made vulnerable to climate change. However, I also argue that these ethicists are likely to diverge in terms of the strategies they believe would actually fulfil such moral responsibilities, depending on whether their primary (...) concern is rectificatory justice or duties of beneficence. To support this argument, I consider three plausible strategies for helping wild animals vulnerable to climate change: rescue and rehabilitation, habitat restoration, and assisted migration. I argue that different theoretical approaches to animal ethics are likely to diverge on aspects of all these strategies. These differences mean that the process of creating wide agreement among animal ethicists on climate adaptation strategies to assist vulnerable wild animals faces significant hurdles. (shrink)

Despite the substantial research into the peculiar political and legal status of climate migrants, there is comparatively little exploration of the particular forms of loss such migrants might face or how efforts might mitigate such loss. This paper aims to begin filling that void by characterizing such loss, using the framework of the UNFCC’s Warsaw Mechanism, as agential harm. Using existing models for thinking about the preservation of values and links with the past, I aim to use this idea (...) of a threat to agency to discuss how migration could occur to better preserve the agential control of displaced populations. (shrink)

Multiple states are at risk of becoming uninhabitable due to climate change, forcing their populations to flee. While the 1951 Refugee Convention provides the gold standard of international protection, it is only applied to a limited subset of people fleeing their countries, those who suffer persecution, which most people fleeing climate change cannot establish. While many journalists and non-lawyers freely use the term “climate refugees,” governments, and courts, as well as UNHCR and many refugee experts, (...) have excluded most climate refugees from the Convention as a matter of legal interpretation. In our 2015 paper, “Unable to Return in the 1951 Refugee Convention: Stateless Refugees and Climate Change”, we sought to reopen the debate on “climate refugees” by arguing that some climate refugees qualify under the 1951 Convention as it is currently written (even if they are not persecuted): those who are stateless and are unable to return to their country of origin because climate change has rendered it uninhabitable. Our interpretation, however, has been rejected by Goodwin-Gill and McAdam (2021) and by Foster and Lambert (2019), which explicitly responds to our paper. Here, we address and respond to their arguments, and develop a new supplementary one, drawing on the principle of systemic integration, as enshrined in Article 31(3)(c) of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties. (shrink)

Climate change is reshaping patterns of displacement around the world. Extreme weather events destroy homes, environmental degradation threatens the viability of livelihoods, sea level rise and coastal erosion force communities to relocate, and risks to food and resource security magnify the sources of political instability. Climate displacement—the displacement of people driven at least in part by the impacts of climate change—is a pressing moral challenge that is incumbent upon us to address. -/- This book develops (...) a political theory of climate displacement. Most work on climate displacement has tended to take an idealized ‘climate refugee’ as its focus. But focusing on the figure of the climate refugee obscures the complexity and heterogeneity of climate displacement. Instead, this book takes the empirical dynamics of climate displacement as its starting point. It examines the moral and political problems raised by the interaction of climate change and displacement in five domains: community relocation, territorial sovereignty, labour migration, refugee movement, and internal displacement. In each context, climate displacement raises distinct questions, which this book explores on their own terms. At the same time, this book treats climate displacement as a unified phenomenon by examining the overarching questions of responsibility and fairness that it raises. The result is an empirically grounded political theory that both maps the conceptual terrain of climate displacement and charts a course for meeting the moral challenge that it raises. (shrink)

Climate change threatens to infringe the human rights of many. Taking an optimistic stance, climate engineering might reduce the extent to which such rights are infringed, but it might also bring about other rights infringements. This Forum, leading off the special issue on climate engineering governance, engages three scholars in a discussion of three core issues at the intersection of human rights and climate engineering. The Forum is divided into three sections, each authored by a (...) different scholar and discussing a distinct aspect of this relationship. First, Toby Svoboda gives an overarching view of three competing approaches to human rights, grounded in philosophy; then, Holly Jean Buck looks at lessons from how the climate migration conversation brings a human rights approach to a climate policy issue; and finally, Pablo Suarez illustrates how a humanitarian approach to climate engineering works with a human rights framework. The conclusion of the Forum draws together points of overlap across the three sections and suggests a path forward for policy and research on this topic. Together, the sections show that climate engineering, should it materialize, will pose novel human rights challenges, and may well force reconsideration of how human rights are applied as a guide to action. (shrink)

Assisted migration is a controversial conservation measure that includes moving species threatened by climate change beyond their indigenous range. Sandler argues that assisted migration exhausts most of the value of the species moved and that assisted migration, thus, fails to be a workable conservation measure. We show how accepting the moral relevance of species’ indigenous range helps to reconcile Sandler's argument with earlier arguments about value loss in ecosystem restoration by Elliot and Katz. Contrary to (...) Sandler, they do not favour losing a biological unit to retaining it in a human-influenced form. Drawing on the distinction between property- and history-based understandings of naturalness, we further argue that the outcomes of assisted migration to the predicted range are more natural in the property-based sense of the term, and thus retain more value, than the outcomes of ‘‘assisted migration'’ elsewhere. (shrink)

Some species face extinction if they are unable to keep pace with climate change. Yet proposals to assist threatened species’ poleward or uphill migration (‘assisted migration’) have caused significant controversy among conservationists, not least because assisted migration seems to threaten some values, even as it protects others. To date, however, analysis of ethical and value questions about assisted migration has largely remained abstract, removed from the ultimately pragmatic decision about whether or not to move (...) a particular species. This paper uses the case study of the whitebark pine, a keystone species of sub-alpine habitats in western North America, to consider how particular cases of assisted migration may be ethically approached. After taking into account the value of species, wildness, place, ecosystems, culture and sentient animals, we conclude that, on balance, there appear to be good reasons to move the whitebark pine. (shrink)

In Justice for People on the Move, Gillian Brock develops a promising, original account of migration justice. In her view, states have a robust (though conditional) right to self-determination, which includes a reasonably strong right to regulate migration. However, in order for these rights to be justified, three legitimacy requirements must be met. Most obviously, states must respect the human rights of their own citizens and the international state system itself must be legitimate. This latter condition also requires (...) states to do their part in sustaining a justified state system, which includes helping to alleviate “legitimacy gaps,” including significant human rights violations in other states. Brock uses this framework to address several pressing migration-related policy issues, including Muslim bans, the deportation of unauthorized migrants, temporary labor migration, and refugee protection. However, one topic is notably absent from her analysis: climate-related displacement. Some theorists insist that climate change migrants should not be considered refugees because they do not fit the standard definition of a refugee. In particular, climate migrants were displaced by droughts, floods, storms, or sea level rise rather than by war or persecution, and many are able to remain in their homes at present but will be forced to relocate at some point in the future. This paper explores the implications of Brock’s theory of migration justice for climate migration. I suggest that although her approach to refugee protection may initially appear to exclude climate migrants, her understanding of right to self-determination yields strong obligations to assist them. I take this to be a strength of her framework, which makes an important, albeit indirect, contribution to current debates on climate change migration. (shrink)

This paper examines the responsibilities of states to assist and to receive stateless people who are forced to leave their state territory due to rising seas and other unavoidable climate change impacts and the rights of ‘climate refugees’ to choose their host state. The paper employs a praxeological method of non-ideal theorising, which entails identifying and negotiating the unavoidable tensions and trade-offs associated with different framings of state responsibility in order to find a path forward that maximises (...) the protection of climate refugees within the constraints imposed by political feasibility. It argues that the responsibility of states to support climate refugees through financial and technical assistance should be treated separately from their responsibility to receive them. The former is a differentiated responsibility grounded in the ability to pay principle, or relative capability, while the latter is a common responsibility grounded in the fact that all states have causally contributed to their plight, albeit in varying degrees which cannot be, and need not be, precisely determined. A common state ‘responsibility to receive’ is linked with a right on the part of climate refugees to choose their host to suit their circumstances, which would provide a form of partial compensation for the injustice and trauma of their loss and damage. This right is expected to become more viable, and the political willingness of states to receive them more likely, the more that climate refugees are assured of adequate support for resettlement according to states’ differentiated responsibilities to assist. (shrink)

There has been a recent resurgence of what Betsy Hartmann dubbed “the greening of hate” (blaming immigrants for environmental issues in the US). When immigrants move to the U.S., the argument goes, their CO2 emissions increase, thereby making climate change worse. Using migration from the Lower 48 to Alaska as a model, I illustrate how this anti-immigration argument has more traction than it is generally given credit for, and might be more convincing in a different situation. Nonetheless, (...) it is not convincing given the current pattern of climate emissions and prevailing justice considerations. Climate matters; how we treat each other matters, too. (shrink)

In the years to come, a great number of people are going to be displaced due to climate change. Climate refugees are going to migrate to find somewhere more hospitable to live. In light of this, many countries are likely to try to prevent the influx of climate refugees, and more specifically argue that they cannot reasonably be required to take in large numbers of refugees as this is simply too demanding. This objection—the demandingness objection to (...) taking in climate refugees—is the focus of the present article. The ‘demandingness objection’ is clarified in greater detail. And it is pointed out that it relies on agent-relative options and that, according to what is dubbed ‘Kagan’s conditional’, agent-relative options require an agent-relative constraint against harming. This constraint, however, is violated when states significantly contribute to climate change and thus cause people to be harmed by the effects thereof. On this basis, it is argued that such states forfeit their right to invoke the demandingness objection. Roughly, when a state violates an individual’s right not to be harmed, it owes that individual to undo the harmful condition, or if that is not possible at least some form of compensation, and it cannot be relieved from that obligation by simply pointing out that it is costly to comply with it. (shrink)

In a single generation, the rise of Asia has precipitated a dramatic sea change in the world’s economic and political orders. This reconfiguration is taking place amidst a host of deepening global predicaments, including climate change, migration, increasing inequalities of wealth and opportunity, that cannot be resolved by purely technical means or by seeking recourse in a liberalism that has of late proven to be less than effective. The present work critically explores how the pan-Asian phenomenon (...) of Confucianism offers alternative values and depths of ethical commitment that cross national and cultural boundaries to provide a new response to these challenges. When searching for resources to respond to the world’s problems, we tend to look to those that are most familiar: Single actors pursuing their own self-interests in competition or collaboration with other players. As is now widely appreciated, Confucian culture celebrates the relational values of deference and interdependence—that is, relationally constituted persons are understood as embedded in and nurtured by unique, transactional patterns of relations. This is a concept of person that contrasts starkly with the discrete, self-determining individual, an artifact of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Western European approaches to modernization that has become closely associated with liberal democracy. Examining the meaning and value of Confucianism in the twenty-first century, the contributors—leading scholars from universities around the world—wrestle with several key questions: What are Confucian values within the context of the disparate cultures of China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam? What is their current significance? What are the limits and historical failings of Confucianism and how are these to be critically addressed? How must Confucian culture be reformed if it is to become relevant as an international resource for positive change? Their answers vary, but all agree that only a vital and critical Confucianism will have relevance for an emerging world cultural order. (shrink)

Without urgent, systemic, and collective global interventions to address the emerging climate emergency, we are likely to continue to see a range of increasingly significant adverse impacts globally. Temperatures will continue to increase, ice shelves will melt, seas will rise, crops will fail, water scarcity will increase and spread, wildfires will accelerate, and food and water insecurity, violence, and the largest human migration in history will ensue. According to the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP), these climate (...) changes will displace over 1.2 billion people by 2050 at a rate currently exceeding 21.5 million people per year. This mass migration will create incredible burdens on political, legal, economic, agricultural, educational, and health infrastructures in future host countries, and we are globally unprepared. It is well-recognized that the solution to these crises lies in our collective awakening by embracing complexity and employing bold and holistic perspectives. However, theoretical and applied advancements that may meaningfully inform practical approaches to urgently address climate related threats remain scattered and insufficient. The purpose of our proposed paper is to advance the concept of adaptive polycentric meta-networks (APMNs) as a partial solution to collectively address climate crises. We draw upon key insights from works on polycentricity, complexity leadership, and meta-networks, to arrive at our integrative framework. We also discuss ways that the proposed framework aligns with the dynamics of collective mindfulness and practical wisdom, particularly to facilitate cross-sector and global collaborations, across cultures and spiritual practices, to achieve the climate change goals at a macro scale. We believe that our framework offers an important conceptual and practical pathway to tackle the complex dynamics of climate change, and to generate the needed collective sensemaking and awareness to awaken, engage, and align collective leadership where it is needed, at global, national, regional and local levels and across governments, NGOs, and corporate interests. (shrink)

Assisted migration, an ecosystem engineering technology, is receiving increasing attention and significant support as a means to save biodiversity in a changing climate. Few substantive, or not obviously deficient, reasons have been offered for why pursuing this conservation goal via these means might be good. Some proponents of AM, including those who identify themselves as “pragmatists,” even suggest there is little need for such argument. We survey the principal reasons offered for AM, as well as reasons offered for (...) not offering reasons. As exemplified by the case for translocating whitebark pine, which may at first seem especially strong, we note the incongruence of framing the goal of AM in terms of “saving biodiversity,” neglect of some crucial moral questions, marginalization of normative and scientific context when AM is cast as the lesser of two evils in a “crisis,” doubtful validity and, in any case, marginal importance of arguments that AM projects ought to be undertaken, inconsistent use of scientific facts, and omission of science that counters sanguine assessments. All told—even in cases such as whitebark pine for which AM may seem most defensible—there is little reason to think that AM projects are good as means to “save biodiversity,” or good as means to other goals that have accreted into arguments for these projects. (shrink)

Urban residents have the potential to play a key role in helping to facilitate ecological resilience of wilderness areas and ecosystems beyond the city by helping ensure the migration of nonhuman climate refugee populations. Three ethical frameworks related to this issue could determine whether we have an ethical duty to help nonhuman climate refugee populations: ethical individualism, ethical holism, and species ethics. Using each of these frameworks could support the stronger view that policy makers and members of (...) the public have a moral duty to mitigate the impacts of climate induced migration, or the weaker claim that these impacts should be taken into account when making land-use and planning decisions in urban contexts. (shrink)

Climate change increasingly impacts the resilience of ecosystems and agricultural production. On the one hand, changing weather patterns negatively affect crop yields and thus global food security. Indeed, we live in an age where more than one billion people are going hungry, and this number is expected to rise as climate-induced change continues to displace communities and thus separate them from their means of food production (Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre 2015). In this context, if one accepts (...) a humancentric ethic, then the focus would be on addressing impacts to agricultural production, and thus food security (Borlaug 1997; Navin 2012). On the other hand, ecological resilience is also being impacted by climate change, as species go extinct or migrate due to fluctuating temperatures and shifting weather patterns. This reduction of resilience negatively impacts ecosystem services and the ability of the natural world to support life (Palmer and Larson 2014; Urban 2015). From an environmental holist perspective, then, one could argue that the ethical path would be to focus on reducing negative impacts to species and/or local ecosystems rather than increasing crop yields. Thus, there appears to be a tension between the prioritization of crop yields and the mitigation of ecosystem impacts. While this tension is well established in the agricultural literature (Kirschenmann 2010; Noll 2018), climatezas lochange exacerbates the situation, as agricultural lands are stressed and climate-induced migrations increase already high demands for foodstuffs, thus bringing the conflict to the forefront (Macdonald et al. 2015; Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations 2017a). (shrink)

This paper gives a normative assessment of the problem of forced environmental migration, or, migration driven primarily by environmental events, drawing particular attention to the framing of citizen and non-citizen rights in the context of anthropogenic climate change. It explores a moral imperative to install special migration rights for Environmentally Displaced Peoples and briefly assesses the ability of current domestic migration policy to offer such rights. The paper concludes by offering three theoretical policy-oriented exercises, (...) ultimately locating tiered citizenship as the most immediate ethically robust and politically acceptable solution to the challenge of environmental displacement. (shrink)

This paper is a study of ethics – in practice. It examines how people in the world, and more particularly in rich countries, have responded to the ethical challenges associated with recent crises: climate change, COVID-19 and international migration. What has been the nature of the discourse? What international agreements have been made? Have they, in practice, been followed up? The evidence is that – in practice – nations, and by implication their citizens, have displayed very little (...) obligation to those beyond their boundaries. A few exceptions may, however, be noted; where citizens of ‘nearby’ countries receive preferential treatment. (shrink)

The conditions of climate change are increasingly shaping the modern era of international migration; yet the principles and norms that shape the international regime are struggling to keep pace with this reality. Because forced environmental migration is becoming more prominent, it is necessary to respond at the international level. Not only is it the ethical responsibility of the international community to recognize special mobility rights for envi­ronmentally displaced peoples, but further, these rights should be maximized with (...) policy-oriented solutions that sacrifice neither feasibility nor ethical robustness. The mechanisms of dual, tiered, and deterritorialized citizenship are a way to bring special mobility rights for climate migrants into fruition. (shrink)

Conservation biologists recognize a duty to maintain as much value as possible in ecosystems that are threatened by recent anthropogenic impacts. Until recently the paradigm of contemporary conservation seemed relatively straightforward: the best way to maintain the value of species and ecosystems at a given location was to maintain—or shepherd the system back towards—historical conditions. Among the most difficult theoretical tasks was the determination of “baseline” historical conditions (or trajectories) to return to, recognizing the dynamism of ecosystems over time. However, (...) the rate, scale, and magnitude of contemporary climate change, species introductions, and land-use change make it increasingly impractical to return locations to any kind of historical state. This forces a paradigm shift which is both ongoing and difficult, and necessitates a rigorous evaluation of the scientific and ethical foundations of modern conservation along with a careful reexamination of terminology. Here, I discuss the moral relevance and waning utility of the geographically-based and dichotomous understanding of “native” (or “in situ”) which is an important component of conservation ethics and practice. I then propose a new understanding of nativeness in which a species is native—not to a geographic location—but to a quantifiable set of biotic, climatic, geologic, and topographic conditions (i.e. its niche) that can then map to geographic space. Following this, I demonstrate the unique utility of this concept, which I will refer to as “econativeness,” in thinking through conservation problems—range expansions, range contractions, species introductions, and assisted migration—where the classical understanding of nativeness has become increasingly inadequate for assessing the moral value of species. (shrink)

The Dynamics of Social Practice -- Introducing Theories of Practice -- Materials and Resources -- Sequence and Structure -- Making and Breaking Links -- Material, Competence and Meaning -- Car-Driving: Elements and Linkages Making Links -- Breaking Links -- Elements Between Practices -- Standardization and Diversity -- Individual and Collective Careers -- The Life of Elements -- Modes of Circulation -- Transportation and Access: Material -- Abstraction, Reversal and Migration: Competence -- Association and Classification: Meaning -- Packing and Unpacking (...) -- Emergence, Disappearance and Persistence -- Recruitment, Defection and Reproduction -- First Encounters: Networks and Communities -- Capture and Commitment: Careers and Carriers -- Collapse and Transformation: The Dynamics of Defection -- Daily Paths, Life Paths and Dominant Projects -- Connections Between Practices -- Bundles and Complexes -- Collaboration and Competition -- Selection and Integration -- Coordinating Daily Life -- Circuits of Reproduction -- Monitoring Practices-as-Performances -- Monitoring Practices-as-Entities -- Cross-Referencing Practices-as-Performances -- Cross-Referencing Practices-as-Entities -- Aggregation -- Elements of Coordination -- Intersecting Circuits -- Representing the Dynamics of Social Practice -- Representing Elements and Practices -- Characterizing Circulation -- Competition, Transformation and Convergence -- Reproducing Elements, Practices and Relations between Them -- Time and Practice -- Space and Practice -- Dominant Projects and Power -- Promoting Transitions in Practice -- Climate Change and Behaviour Change -- Basis of Action -- Processes of Change -- Positioning Policy -- Transferable Lessons -- Practice Theory and Climate Change Policy -- Configuring Elements of Practice -- Configuring Relations between Practices -- Configuring Careers: Carriers and Practices -- Configuring Connections -- Practice Oriented Policy Making. (shrink)

Climate change and environmental problems will force or induce millions of people to migrate. In this article, I describe environmental migration and articulate some of the ethical issues. To begin, I give an account of these migrants that overcomes misleading dichotomies. Then, I focus attention on two important ethical issues: justice and responsibility. Although we are all at risk of becoming environmental migrants, we are not equally at risk. Our risk depends on our temporal position, geographical location, (...) social position, and the kind of society in which we live. We all contribute to environmental problems, but we do not contribute equally. About 11% of the world population is responsible for 50% of carbon emissions. These inequalities raise issues of justice because many of the people who are at high risk have contributed little to the problems. Since the issues of justice are relatively clear and compelling, I focus more attention on issues of responsibility. I use Iris Marion Young’s account of responsibility for structural injustice to address four key questions about moral responsibility and environmental migration. (shrink)

Global climate change is likely to become a major cause of future migration. Small Island States are particularly vulnerable since territorial destruction caused by sea level rise poses a threat to their entire existence. This raises important issues concerning state sovereignty and self-determination. Is it possible for a state to remain self-determining even if it lacks a stable population residing on a specific territory? It has been suggested that migrants from disappearing Small Island States could continue to (...) exercise sovereign control over their abandoned territory. Such an arrangement would allow them to retain a measure of self-determination. The question posed in this paper is whether this ?deterritorialized state proposal? is conceptually plausible and normatively acceptable. It is argued that the proposal is conceptually plausible if we adopt a gradual understanding of ?self-determination?, but that its normative acceptability is weak even if it is supplemented with compensatory measures. (shrink)

Can liberalism survive? In this edited collection, twenty leading political theorists explore the future and past of liberal political thought. Covering issues such as migration, climate change, the family, multiculturalism, structural injustice, rights, justice, equality, misinformation, illiberalism (and post-liberalism) - amongst others - the essays engage with fundamental normative and conceptual questions, as well as detailed analyses of specific historical and contextual challenges facing liberalism today. Forthcoming in May 2024.

Global distributive justice is now part of mainstream political debate. It incorporates issues that are now a familiar feature of the political landscape, such as global poverty, trade justice, aid to the developing world and debt cancellation. This is the first textbook to focus exclusively on issues of distributive justice on the global scale. It gives clear and up-to-date accounts of the major theories of global justice and spells out their significance for a series of important political issues, including (...) class='Hi'>climate change, international trade, human rights and migration. These issues are brought to life through the use of case studies, which emphasise the connection of theories of justice to contemporary politics, and 'Further Issues' sections, which discuss emerging debates or controversies that are likely to command increasing attention in the coming years. (shrink)