Mind the Gap – Climate Change Displaced Persons & the International Refugee Regime Draſt paper by Alex Lenferna University of Washington Philosophy Department lenferna@uw.edu alexlenferna.wordpress.com Anthropogenic climate change is increasingly becoming one of the major drivers of migraon, both forced and otherwise. The effects of anthropogenic climate change are already being linked to increased migraon, and projecons of future climate change, driven predominately by greenhouse gas emissions, predict that climate change will contribute significantly to an increase in the number of people seeking to migrate, with esmates ranging from 25 million to 2 billion climate change displaced persons by 2050 (Gómez, 2013; McAdam, 2012; Solomon & Koko, 2013). 1 The effects of climate change and the ways that it will lead to increases in migraon are both myriad and complex. Not only will people be forcibly displaced by natural disasters and other slow onset effects of climate change, but furthermore climate change’s more subtle effects which ripples throughout our ecosystem, sociees and economies will likely deprive increasingly large numbers of people of the socio-economic and ecological opportunies needed to live a decent human life. 2 Currently, climate change displaced persons fall into a large legal protecon gap, such that, to borrow Hannah Arendt’s words, it is “not that they are not equally before the law, but that no law exists for them” (1979, pp. 296–7). 3 Thus, as Tracy Skillington points out, “in lacking a fully legal identy, the climate displaced are pushed into spaces beyond adequate legal protecon where their ‘irregular’ status forms the basis of a roune and publicly legimated legal violence against them” (2015, p. 8). In the face 1 The reasons for these widely varying esmates are mulple and are grounded in uncertainty regarding the extent of climate change, our ability to adapt, and what poverty reducon and development progress will be made. There are also significant definional issues regarding who should be counted as a climate change displaced person which account for different esmaons. 2 “Climate change is expected to generate internal and internaonal movements due to increase in the intensity and frequency of natural hazards, rising sea levels, persistent drought and deserficaon, and, potenally, new conflicts over scarce resources. 3 Arendt was inially describing stateless people, but her descripon is apt for climate change displaced persons.