Good fences don't make good neighbours, outlining the complexities of protecting climate displacees, with special reference to India and Bangladesh

Abstract

Every year climate change causes the death of over 300,000 people, seriously affects 325 million people and causes economic losses of $125 billion. However, the most severe effects of climate change will be those on mass migration. Environmental changes such as sea level rise, desertification and an increase in tropical cyclones, just to name a few, are already pressuring communities around the globe to relocate within and across international borders. According to Norman Myers (1997), by 2050, climate change will have produced over 200 million climate displacees ). This would mean that ‘one in every 45 people in the world will have been displaced by climate change’. At this point, there is no legal framework that offers protection for victims of climate induced displacement. This thesis addresses the conceptual, legal and political difficulties of finding sufficient remedies for this problem and will examine whether the human rights system may serve to overcome these. A case study of India and Bangladesh will be used to convey these obstacles more in depth.