Confronting a Rising Tide: A Proposal for a Convention on Climate Change Refugees
![handle is hein.journals/helr33 and id is 353 raw text is: CONFRONTING A RISING TIDE:
A PROPOSAL FOR A CONVENTION ON
CLIMATE CHANGE REFUGEES
Bonnie Docherty*
Tyler Giannini**
I. INTRODUCTION
Climate change will force millions of people to flee their homes over
the coming century.' Rising sea levels threaten to envelop small island
states. Desertification will make swaths of currently occupied land uninhab-
itable. More intense storms will drive people, at least temporarily, to relo-
cate to safer ground. Studies predict that by 2050 the number of climate
change refugees2 may dwarf the number of traditional refugees - that is,
those entitled to protection under the 1951 Refugee Convention3 and its
1967 Protocol.4 Climate change is an environmental phenomenon, yet most
scientists agree that human activities around the world contribute to it.' Be-
cause the nature of climate change is global and humans play a contributory
role, the international community should accept responsibility for mitigating
climate-induced displacement. States should develop an innovative, interna-
* Bonnie Docherty is a Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School and a Clinical Instructor
in Harvard Law School's International Human Rights Clinic, where she has worked on human
rights and environment issues. She is also a Researcher at Human Rights Watch; in that capac-
ity she has done extensive work on treaties, including through active involvement in the nego-
tiations of the recently adopted and signed Convention on Cluster Munitions.
** Tyler Giannini is a Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School, where he is also Clinical
Director of the Human Rights Program. He has worked on issues related to human rights and
the environment for more than fifteen years, including with EarthRights International, an or-
ganization that he co-founded.
The authors wish to thank Sari Aziz, Christopher Rogers, and Anne Siders for their valuable
research assistance and feedback. The authors also wish to acknowledge the helpful comments
from colleagues who attended a presentation on this paper at the Human Rights Program and
from participants at the Harvard Environmental Law Review's symposium Climate Change
and Global Justice: Crafting Fair Solutions for Nations and People.
See infra Part II.A for discussion of the scale of the problem.
2 For purposes of this Article, the term refugees is limited to individuals who cross
international borders. See infra Part III for full discussion of definitional issues.
3 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, opened for signature July 28, 1951, 189
U.N.T.S. 150 [hereinafter Refugee Convention].
' Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees art. 1, opened for signature Jan. 31, 1967, 19
U.S.T. 6223, 606 U.N.T.S. 267 [hereinafter Refugee Protocol].
I See, e.g., U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change art. 1(2), opened for signa-
ture May 9, 1992, S. TREATY Doc. No. 102-38, 1771 U.N.T.S. 107 [hereinafter UNFCCC]
(defining climate change as a change of climate which is attributed directly or indirectly to
human activity that alters the composition of the global atmosphere and which is in addition to
natural climate variability observed over comparable time periods); INTERGOVERNMENTAL
PANEL ON CLIMATE CHANGE, CLIMATE CHANGE 2007: THE PHYSICAL SCIENCE BASIS, CONTRI-
BUTION OF WORKING GROUP I TO THE FOURTH ASSESSMENT REPORT OF THE IPCC 702 (2007)
[hereinafter IPCC, THE PHYSICAL SCIENCE BASIS].](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/helr33&div=15&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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Confronting a Rising Tide: A Proposal for a Convention on Climate Change Refugees
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