ABSTRACT
In late 2013, Ioane Teitiota tried to become the world’s first official climate refugee. In a case argued before the High Court of New Zealand, Teitiota claimed that he should be granted refugee status because rising sea levels caused by anthropogenic climate change imperil his ability to live in his home country, the Pacific island nation of Kiribati (Queally 2013). Teitiota’s suit was unsuccessful. In rejecting his petition, Judge John Priestly wrote that Teitiota’s refugee claim did not meet the country’s legal standards for asylum since “by returning to Kiribati, [Teitiota] would not suffer a sustained and systemic violation of his basic human rights such as the right to life . . . or the right to adequate food, clothing and housing” (Queally 2013). In ruling against Teitiota, however, Priestly was not simply deciding an individual case, for he was also clearly aware of the global precedent that a positive ruling would set. Were Teitiota’s asylum claim to be successful, it might serve as a model for other jurisdictions, and, Priestly stated, “at a stroke millions of people who are facing medium-term economic deprivation, or the immediate consequences of natural disasters or warfare, or indeed presumptive hardships caused by climate change, would be entitled to protection under the Refugee Convention” (Queally 2013). For Priestly and many other legal scholars, it is not the prerogative of the court system to alter the terms of the UN Refugee Convention, which was approved by member states shortly after World War Two. Yet if climate refugees cannot be said to be subjected to rights violations similar to those carried out by the Nazis, climate refugees undeniably are, as Andrew Ross has written, “living embodiments of the quandaries raised by climate debt” (Ross 2013, 36). What, it will be increasingly imperative to ask, is owed to these displaced people, and who owes it to them?
