Bhavya Raghav, LLM, University School of Law and Legal Studies, Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University, Dwarka Sector 16C, New Delhi
ABSTRACT
With a rapid change in the global environment there are so many changes happening around the world and one such noticeable change is an increase in the number of people who are bound to leave their homeland and uproot their files completely. They are called climate refugees. It is not a defined term anywhere and hence not recognised. A refugee, as defined in 1951 Geneva Convention1, is someone “who is unable or unwilling to return to their country of origin owing to a well founded fear of being persecuted for reason of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or a political opinion”. Media gives ample attention to the plight of refugees who seek asylum in other countries due to wars, armed conflicts, inequality faced and political conflicts in their own nation. But what remains absent from the mainstream conversation is the large-scale human movement derived from ecological consequences of short-term or long-term climatic crises.
The objective of this article is to draw the attention of the readers towards the increasing number of climate change refugees and simultaneous decrease in the resources one needs to live through life. With the help of this writing, the writer has emphasised on the growing number of such severe events which not only lead to destruction of resources, rise in the sea level, change in hydrological cycle, increase in flash floods and strain economy but also displacement of humans if not permanently than temporary(climate-induced disasters). Sustainable development can be a part of the bigger picture in all of the climate- induced disasters.
Keywords: Climate refugee, climate change, sustainable development
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