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Edwards, Alice --- "Climate Change and International Refugee Law" [2012] ELECD 738; in Rayfuse, Rosemary; Scott, V. Shirley (eds), "International Law in the Era of Climate Change" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2012)

Book Title: International Law in the Era of Climate Change

Editor(s): Rayfuse, Rosemary; Scott, V. Shirley

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781849800303

Section: Chapter 3

Section Title: Climate Change and International Refugee Law

Author(s): Edwards, Alice

Number of pages: 26

Extract:

3. Climate change and international
refugee law
Alice Edwards*

INTRODUCTION**
It has been suggested that `the gravest effects of climate change may be
those on human migration',1 with tens of millions of persons displaced by
shoreline erosion, coastal flooding and agricultural disruption.2 The United
Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has forecast that
climate change `will become the biggest driver of population displace-
ments, both inside and across national borders, within the not too distant
future'.3 Estimates of those predicted to endure climate-related displace-
ment vary widely from 50 million in 20104 to 200 million by 2050.5 Others
have claimed even higher rates, with the range being somewhere between

* This chapter was written when Dr Edwards was Lecturer in International
Refugee and Human Rights Law at the Refugee Studies Centre, Oxford, and
updated subsequently. It does not necessarily reflect the views of the UN or the
UNHCR.
** All websites last accessed 15 April 2012.
1
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Climate Change: The
IPCC Scientific Assessment: Final Report of Working Group I (New York: Cam-
bridge University Press 1990), 20.
2
IPCC, Climate Change 2001: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability, A Report
of Working Group II, Notes for Policy-Makers, available at http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/
climate-changes-2001/synthesis-syr/english/wg2-summary-policymakers.pdf,14.
3
UNHCR, A. Guterres, at UN Climate Change Conference 2009, quoted in
`Climate Change Could Become the Biggest Driver of Displacement: UNHCR
Chief', News Stories, 16 December ...