ABSTRACT
This chapter argues two claims. First, environmental refugees can be considered as a distinctive legal category, and to them the treatment is due that the 1951 Convention on the Status of Refugees dictates. Second, environmental refugees, being entitled to permanent residence in a territory, could restrict or undermine the territorial jurisdiction of the admitting states. However, environmental refugees display distinctive features. Ordinary political refugees lose their right to a territory because their permanence in their place of living has been made extremely difficult and dangerous by political persecution, or by a lacking state protection. State protection of citizens' human rights and freedoms might be achieved only insofar as the state exercises an exclusive jurisdiction within a given closed territory. Exclusive jurisdiction in a territory might in its turn be understood as the right to exercise coercive powers to make, adjudicate and enforce legal provisions within that territory, without interference from outside forces.
