ABSTRACT
Regulatory frameworks for migration provide both opportunities and challenges for persons who voluntarily migrate or are forcibly displaced as a result of environmental degradation and climate change. In particular, recent inter-disciplinary academic and practitioner research has highlighted the potential human rights implications of such population movements and the range of legal and policy responses required of States and other duty-bearers to ensure the protection of persons. This contribution reviews relevant international legal developments covering refugees and displacement, environmental degradation and climate change, and human rights. Key areas of current debate, addressing causation, legal categorisation of migrants and those displaced, institutional mechanisms and specific linkages between climate change and human rights are highlighted. In particular, recent scholarship on the need to ensure displacement and adaptation with dignity, and emerging frameworks to identify vulnerable groups are discussed.
