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Crawford, Emily; Rayfuse, Rosemary --- "Climate Change and Statehood" [2012] ELECD 745; 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 10

Section Title: Climate Change and Statehood

Author(s): Crawford, Emily; Rayfuse, Rosemary

Number of pages: 11

Extract:

10. Climate change and statehood
Emily Crawford and Rosemary Rayfuse

INTRODUCTION
Climate change presents a unique threat to the territorial integrity of states,
indeed, to the very concept of statehood itself. As the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has noted, climate change will affect the
physical territory of states in a number of ways through, for example, the
loss of viable eco-systems due to desertification, increased soil salinity,
flooding of coastal and low-lying regions, or loss of reliable access to land
due to increased severe weather events such as hurricanes.1 Coastal states,
in particular those with low-lying coastal areas, will also be affected by
permanent loss of land through shoreline erosion caused by extreme
weather events and sea-level rise.2 Moreover, it has been recognised that by
rendering some inhabited land incapable of sustaining human habitation,
climate change will also result in the forced migration of some or all of a
population from their lands.3
At the extreme end of the scale, climate change induced territorial
degradation coupled with climate change induced migration may threaten
the very existence of some states.4 In particular, it has been suggested that

1
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), The Physical Science
Basis: Contribution of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment Report of the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (2007), 13; V.O. Kolmannskog, Future
Floods of Refugees: A Comment on Climate Change, Conflict and Forced Migration
(Oslo: Norwegian Refugee Council 2008) 13­16.
2
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