ABSTRACT

Environmental and climate change are increasingly discussed with regard to their potential impact on human migration. In this chapter, the authors contrast debates situated in the European Union with those in various political fora in the Pacific region. They introduces the concept of a legal anthropology of emergence, an approach that draws on the 'sociology of emergence' developed by de Sousa Santos and Rodríguez-Garavito. The authors use this approach to analyse debates on environmental migration in two different geographic and institutional settings: the European Union and the Pacific region. From the perspective of international law and from a European perspective, the treatment of climate and environmental migrants appears to be characterised by ad hoc solutions and the individual approaches of nation states, rather than by the development of a global solution. The expected environmental changes and anticipated results of anthropogenic climate change currently lead to intensive debates around migration and resettlement in the Pacific region.