Ingrid Boas

Preparing for a warmer world. Towards a global governance system to protect climate refugees

Climate change threatens to cause the largest refugee crisis in human history. Millions of people, largely in Africa and Asia, might be forced to leave their homes to seek refuge in other places or countries over the course of the century. Yet the current institutions, organizations, and funding mechanisms are not sufficiently equipped to deal with this looming crisis. The situation calls for new governance. We outline and discuss in this article a blueprint for a global governance architecture for the protection and voluntary resettlement of climate refugeesdefined as people who have to leave their habitats because of sudden or gradual alterations in their natural environment related to one of three impacts of climate change: sea-level rise, extreme weather events, and drought and water scarcity. We provide an extensive review of current estimates of likely numbers and probable regions of origin of climate refugees. With a view to existing institutions, we argue against the extension of the definition of refugees under the 1951 Geneva Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees. Key elements of our proposal are, instead, a new legal instrument specifically tailored for the needs of climate refugeesa Protocol on Recognition, Protection, and Resettlement of Climate Refugees to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Changeas well as a separate funding mechanism.

Cross-sectoral strategies in global sustainability governance: towards a nexus approach

The recent shift from the Millennium Development Goals to the much broader Sustainable Development Goals has given further impetus to the debate on the nexus between the multiple sectors of policy-making that the Goals are to cover. The key message in this debate is that different domains—for instance, water, energy and food—are interconnected and can thus not be effectively resolved unless they are addressed as being fully interrelated and interdependent. Yet while this overall narrative is forcefully supported in the new UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the 17 Sustainable Development Goals that are the main part of this agenda, many Goals still remain sectoral in their basic outlook. This now requires, we argue, a new focus in both policy and research on the nexus between different Sustainable Development Goals, especially with a view to reforms in the overall institutional setting that is required to sufficiently support such a nexus approach. This article thus examines the nexus approach in the context of the Sustainable Development Goals and identifies multiple avenues for its institutionalisation in global governance.

From conflict to resilience? Explaining recent changes in climate security discourse and practice

ABSTRACT The recent rise of resilience thinking in climate security discourse and practice is examined and explained. Using the paradigmatic case of the United Kingdom, practitioners’ understandings of resilience are considered to show how these actors use a resilience lens to rearticulate earlier storylines of climate conflict in terms of complexity, decentralisation, and empowerment. Practitioners in the climate security field tend to reinterpret resilience in line with their established routines. As a result, climate resilience storylines and practices turn out to be much more diverse and messy than is suggested in the conceptual literature. Building on these findings, the recent success of resilience thinking in climate security discourse is explained. Climate resilience – not despite but due to its messiness – is able to bring together a wide range of actors, traditionally standing at opposite ends of the climate security debate. Through resilience storylines, climate security discourse becomes something to which a wide range of actors, ranging from security to the development field, can relate.

E-participation for environmental sustainability in transitional urban China

Using information and communication technologies (ICTs), e-participation is a tool that promotes the inclusion of the public in participative and deliberative decision-making processes, thus contributing to a transformation of the interaction between government and citizens in environmental governance and sustainable development. In a number of Chinese cities, citizens increasingly draw on ICTs to promote environmental sustainability and to encourage community-based actions aimed to address various environmental concerns. The potential success of e-participation and the role of ICTs in China has, however, not been well explored. The objective of this study is to understand the role that ICTs can play in promoting public participation about environmental sustainability issues in urban China. Based on an online survey with 630 respondents, the study aims to: (1) analyze what public motivations, perception/attitudes and actions drive environmental e-participation; (2) identify barriers to e-participation, and (3) assess the different applications and functions of ICT for citizen participation in environmental sustainability. The analysis illustrates how ICTs have helped the public to obtain sensitive information about sustainability issues, to mobilize people and to gain media coverage for their actions. The central finding is that new technologies have taken citizen engagement to new heights online. More specifically, the age of ICTs has unleashed a stronger public voice on environmental governance and sustainability issues in urban China, which does not go unnoticed by the Chinese state authorities.

Where is the South in security discourse on climate change? An analysis of India

There is an emerging research trend to incorporate views from the Global South in the analysis of the discourse on climate security. This type of research can enrich mainstream literature that often centres on the role and perceptions of actors from the Global North. This article aims to make explicit the added-value of this emerging research trend and to make an empirical contribution through a study on India. The empirical analysis starts by demonstrating how the Government of India rejects alarmist ideas on climate security. India interprets the discourse as a Western negotiation strategy seeking to push India to accept binding mitigation targets under the UN climate convention. As a next step, the analysis reviews India’s alternative expressions on the climate-security nexus. India presents the issue of internal climate migration in terms of human security, and deals with climate change as part of its policy and discourse on energy security.

Environmental Mobilities: An Alternative Lens to Global Environmental Governance

This article explores the relations between movement, the environment, and governance through the cases of cruise tourism, plastics in the oceans, and environmental migration. It does so by means of a mobilities perspective, which has its origins in sociology and geography. This perspective shifts the analytical focus toward mobilities and environmental problems to understand their governance, as opposed to starting with governance, as many global environmental governance studies do. We coin the term environmental mobilities to refer to the movements of human and nonhuman entities and the environmental factors and impacts associated with these. Environmental mobilities include movements impacting on the environment, movements shaped by environmental factors, and harmful environmental flows, as we illustrate by means of the three cases. We demonstrate how zooming in on the social, material, temporal, and spatial characteristics of these environmental mobilities can help illuminate governance gaps and emerging governance practices that better match their mobile nature. In particular, a mobilities lens helps to understand and capture environmental issues that move, change form, and fluctuate in their central problematique and whose governance is not (yet) highly or centrally institutionalized.

Towards a global governance system to protect climate migrants: taking stock

Climate change may compel millions of people, largely in Africa and Asia, to leave their homes to seek refuge in other places over the course of the century. Yet the current institutions, organizations and funding mechanisms, including new soft law initiatives, are not sufficiently equipped to deal with this. The situation calls for new governance. Following a review of academic and popular debates focussed on defining this issue as climate ‘refugees’ or ‘migrants’, we advance in this chapter a blueprint for a global governance architecture on the protection and voluntary resettlement of climate migrants. We argue against the extension of the definition of refugees under the 1951 Geneva Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, and discuss the limited use of soft law mechanisms as these are largely focussed on state responsibility. Key elements of our proposal are, instead, a new legal instrument that builds on the responsibility of the international community and is specifically tailored for the needs of climate migrants—a Protocol on Recognition, Protection and Resettlement of Climate Migrants to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change—as well as a separate funding mechanism, a Climate Migrant Protection and Resettlement Fund.