ABSTRACT
The fourth chapter deals with the operationalization of the concept of environmental justice (EJ) to the case of the “climate refugees.” In particular, the chapter investigates two crucial questions: (1) Why climate refugees are a matter of EJ and (2) how EJ can contribute to overcoming the legal impasse. Having described what EJ is about, it proceeds by examining the threefold environmental injustice of “climate refugees” through the tripartite notion of coloniality to uncover, and try to overcome, the coloniality of justice that prevents the recognition of climate refugees as new legal subjectivities. Finally, the chapter answers the second question by discussing the possible applications of EJ to face this global challenge. Above all, the chapter dwells upon the potential of a decolonial EJ approach for decolonizing the concept of refugeehood while rethinking the current model of responsibility and the subjects entitled to it.
