Recognition and protection of environmental migrants in international law: A long-lasting swing between urgency and postponement

It was only in the 1990s that global concerns over environmental changes began to acquire the dimension of a humanitarian issue with massive effects on the well-being and safety of vulnerable populations. In the following decade, international experts and regional bodies provided different regulatory solutions aimed at recognizing and protecting people compelled to flee on environmental and climate grounds. However, these solutions have neither produced an internationally agreed definition of environmental migration nor common assistance and protection arrangements. No groundbreaking policy element was introduced in the international debate on environmental migrants until 2015 with the adoption of the Agenda for the Protection of Cross-Border Displaced Persons in the Context of Disasters and Climate Change. The 2030 Agenda on Sustainable Development revitalized interest in and awareness of the causal nexus between environmental threats and migration, then reaffirmed in several United Nations (UN) soft law instruments. Despite this initial policy breakthrough, supported by relevant case law at all levels, the international regulatory process on environmental migration gets jammed again as a consequence of the overall lack of states’ commitment to tackling climate change and granting protection to wider categories of forced migrants.