There is a global concern for climate induced migration and a concern on how to tackle climate refugees. Climate refugees is a term that is not yet defined both internationally and at a European Union level. This thesis is researching the relation between climate refugees and the European Union. By using a critical discourse analysis this thesis analyses the internal factors for the European Union not reaching a common definition for the term climate refugee. By using material from the EU official website this thesis focuses on the textual, discursive and social practices based in Fairclough’s three dimensional model. This thesis found five factors for the European Union not reaching a common definition: the view on security, the lack of responsibility, financial and national interests and a view on that climate refugees are not a European problem.

Global warming is a current topic on the international agenda. The rise of temperature in the atmosphere threatens populations living on island, deltas and coastal areas, and people living nearby the Arctic and areas covered by permafrost are threatened. In turn this leads to the people in these areas being projected to be homeless or displaced due to climate change and the rising numbers of natural disasters. Those people are what you can label as climate refugees. According to IOM and Brown (2001) climate refugees are persons who for compelling reasons of change in the environment which change their living conditions have to escape their homes, either within their country or abroad.The United Nations Refugee Convention is the binding legislation followed by 147 (in 2008) of the UN member states. Either the UN Refugee Convention or any other international law recognizes climate refugees, and those people are due to that not granted any legal status. Who will protect these people when they have to escape their homes? This paper aims to explore what distinguish climate refugees from the refugees embraced by the UN Refugee Convention by a comparative literature review, for in this way be able to recognize the assumptions that make the United Nations to not classify climate refugees with refugee status. Both groups of refugees has in common that they live under the pressured decision they have to make as they flee their native homes to ensure their own and their families survival according to Grove (2006).In the long run both climate refugees and the UN Refugee Convention embraced refugees face the same traumatic experiences escaping their homes and have due to that the similar right to get the same mental help and be protected under international law. But populations facing the effects of global warming do not want to leave their land and believe it is an issue of human rights.

Displacements caused by climate-related events have been on the rise throughout the last decades. The effects of climate change in displacement of people is still a field in construction. The people displaced due to the environment were first denominated as "climate refugees" or "environmental refugees". This thesis aims to examine the protection of the so-called "climate refugee" under international law. The main issue of the thesis relies on the fact that there is no general agreement on the refugee status of the "climate refugees". The refugee regime has the 1951 Convention as its cornerstone, and as such, the analysis of the Convention is crucial to comprehend who can be a refugee. The 1951 Convention is not the only legal instrument in the refugee regime. There are other legal documents capable of guaranteeing protection for refugees. This thesis discusses two other relevant legal instruments dealing with refugee protection: the OAU Convention and the Cartagena Declaration. It analyzes the refugee definitions and the main features of these specific documents. The three documents will be used to establish what sort of protection the "climate refugees" are entitled to under international law. The thesis will use two judicial decisions to evaluate the hypothesis of "climate refugee" being...

This thesis investigates how the United Nations’ (UN) framing of “climate refugees” impacts global humanitarian migration and refugee governance in the context of anthropogenic climate change in which border zones become spaces of biopolitical decision making which impacts both governance strategies and International Relations as an academic field. It argues from a poststructuralist perspective that the UN’s discourse centred around climate change related human movement, the issue of “climate refugees” is downplayed, and “climate refugees” become bare life while their claims to legal protection are delegitimised. Thus, despite the concept of “climate refugees” becoming increasingly important in the Anthropocene, the UN’s discourse has remained vastly unchanged since McNamara’s analysis of it in 2007. The UN’s governance related discourse and reasoning concerning “climate refugees” and (humanitarian) global governance is explored through a Critical Discourse Analysis that examines a set of official UN documents which are relevant to the issue of forced human movement in the context of anthropogenic climate change.

This thesis strives to examine firstly if migration is a significant adaptation strategy to the experience of abundant precipitation, and secondly whether under-five mortality works attenuating or enhancing when being an intermediating factor. With cross-country panel data for precipitation and migration percentage for 169 countries over the world for the time period 1950-2005, a fixed effect model has been created for both parts of the analysis — in the first one to estimate the effects of abundant precipitation on migration flows, and in the second one to examine if and how the mortality rates of children under the age of five works as driver on the effect between abundant precipitation and migration. The results illustrated a positive and significant effect of precipitation on migration when same-year data was used. For the five-year lag data and the ten-year lag data, the null hypothesis which indicates that there is no relationship between the variables could not be rejected, but there were still results that indicated that the migration goes up in a five-year perspective and decreases in a ten-year perspective. The results from the first part of the analysis do not illustrate enormous effects. For the second part of the analysis, results show that the effect of precipitation on under-five mortality does, in contrary to the stated hypothesis, implicate an attenuation as opposed to an enhancement of the effect of precipitation on migration. Due to low precision and non-significant results, it is not possible to determine how exactly the effects are directly affecting each other. This thesis has however helped to prove that one can reject that the effects are strongly enhancing each other.

Medeltemperaturen på jorden har höjts med 1 grad sedan förindustriell tid. Effekterna av denna temperaturhöjning visar sig i form av förhöjda havsnivåer, smältande havsis i Arktis och extrema väderförhållanden. Inom internationell politik är det numera erkänt att migration är och förblir den i särklass största effekten av klimatförändringarna.  Termen ’klimatflyktingar’ används som gemensam benämning för människor som tvingas fly sina hem på grund av klimatförändringar. Studien ämnar undersöka hur klimatflyktingar gestaltas i svenska dagstidningar efter klimatmötet i Paris 2015. Studien syftar vidare till att belysa vilka maktförhållanden som existerar i kontexten kring denna term. En kvalitativ innehållsanalys används för att analysera artiklar från ett antal utvalda svenska dagstidningar. Ett teoretiskt ramverk bestående av gestaltningsteori och politisk ekologi hjälper till att tolka de sju teman som analysen resulterat i.  Resultatet visar att klimatflyktingar avhumaniseras och förstås som en negativ effekt av klimatförändringarna. De som rymmer under termen vill dock inte associeras med den. I Sverige finns en tydlig tendens till förnekelse inför de problem som världen idag står inför till följd av den globala uppvärmningen. Samtidigt råder en stark tilltro till ekologisk modernisering. Röster inom internationell politik vill erkänna klimatflyktingar i internationell lag. Inget större agerande görs dock för att hjälpa människor som dagligen förlorar sina hem till kusterosion, förstörda jordbruksmarker eller översvämningar. / The mean global temperatures have been rising with one degree since pre-industrial time. Effects is shown in the world today in terms of sea level rising, loss of sea ice in Artic and extreme weather conditions. International politics now states that migration is the single biggest effect caused by climate change.  The term ‘climate refugees’ is used as a definition of humans forced to flee their homes due to climate change. The purpose of the thesis is to show how the Swedish daily newspapers frame climate refugees after the climate conference in Paris in 2015. The purpose is more over to highlight existing power relations in this context. A qualitative content analysis is used on articles chosen from a number of Swedish daily papers. Political ecology and framing theory construct a theoretical framework, which helps to understand the themes which occurred in the analysis. The result shows a dehumanization of climate refugees. Climate refugees is highlighted as a negative effect of climate change. However, the term is rejected by people associated with it. In Sweden, there is a sense of denial to the problems caused around the world due to climate change. Faith is placed into ecological modernization. Voices in international politics states the urge to acknowledge the definition of ‘climate refugees’ in to international law. Not much help is offered to people who have lost their home to coastal erosion, flooding or destroyed lands.

I takt med att de globala klimatförändringarna fortsätter kommer konsekvenserna bli allt mer ödesdigra. Vissa av dessa konsekvenser förbises ofta i den globala debatten och i världspolitikens inflytelserika kretsar. Uppskattningar gör gällande att så många som 200 miljoner människor blivit förskjutna som en konsekvens av klimatförändringarna. Detta aktualiserar frågan om klimatflyktingar. Syftet med denna uppsats är att studera varför det internationella samarbetet gällande klimatflyktingar kan betraktas som begränsat. För att närmre studera denna fråga har jag gjort en case study, en tolkande kvalitativ textanalys. Liberalism och realism används som teoretiskt ramverk, som redskap för analysen. De centrala slutsatserna är främst att det för närvarande existerar ett definitionsproblem vad gäller klimatflyktingar, det finns ekonomiska hinder för samarbete och frågan betraktas som ett problem begränsat till låginkomstländer känsliga för klimatförändringar. / As the global climate changes continue the consequences will increase. Some of these consequences are often overlooked in the global debate and influential circles of world politics. Estimations speak of as many as 200 million displaced persons as a consequence of climate change. This brings to the fore the question of climate refugees. The aim of this paper is to study why the international cooperation regarding climate refugees can be seen as limited. To closer look upon this issue I am doing a case study, an interpretative qualitative text analysis. Liberalism and realism are used as theoretical frame, as tools in the analysis. The central conclusions are that it currently exists a problem of definition regarding climate refugees, there are economic obstacles for cooperation and the question is perceived as a problem limited to low income countries fragile for climate change.

L’état actuel des travaux ne rend pas compte de l’ampleur des questions philosophiques et des enjeux moraux suscités par l’apparition sur la scène internationale des réfugiés climatiques. Il est pourtant urgent de leur accorder une protection à travers des accords internationaux. Les philosophes qui se sont penchés sur le sujet ont été induits en erreur tant par la multiplicité des termes employés que leur absence de définitions. Ce travail critique la tendance actuelle des militants écologistes à vouloir englober des populations aux problèmes divers sous le terme de réfugié. Banaliser l’emploi du terme de réfugié n’est pas seulement fallacieux mais également dangereux. A terme, les militants se tourneront vers la Convention de Genève pour revendiquer que les populations déplacées soient considérées comme des réfugiés. Or la Convention de Genève n’est pas un outil adéquat pour remédier au sort de ces populations. De plus, on ne peut élargir le statut de réfugié pour inclure ces populations sans risquer de perdre sa crédibilité et son efficience. Suivre la pente qu’emprunte les militants nous mènerait à accorder le même traitement aux réfugiés climatiques et aux réfugiés politiques, ce qui est une erreur. Notre hypothèse est que les habitants des petits pays insulaires à l’inverse des autres populations ont besoin d’un élargissement de la Convention de Genève. Nous arguerons que nous avons des devoirs et des responsabilités envers eux que nous n’avons pas envers les réfugiés politiques. Pour défendre ce point de vue, il faut définir clairement ce qu’est un réfugié climatique et justifier cette appellation. Nous devrons donc confronter la notion de réfugié climatique à d’autres notions concurrentes. Une fois les termes définis, nous envisagerons les enjeux éthiques à travers le prisme des questions de justice globale. Nous verrons que pour déterminer qui devrait remédier au sort des réfugiés climatique, il ne suffit pas de se référer à la responsabilité causale. Cela nous mènera à arguer que bien que séduisant, le principe pollueur-payeur n’est pas un outil adéquat pour guider la réflexion. Nous serons également amenés à nous interroger sur la pertinence d’une institution environnementale globale. / Current works on the forced migration area does not reveal the magnitude of the philosophical and moral issues raised by the appearance of climate refugees on the international scene . Yet it is urgent to provide protection to them through international agreements. Philosophers who have studied the subject have been misled by both the multiplicity of terms and the lack of definitions. This work criticizes the current trend set by environmental activists who want to include people with various issues under the term of refugee. Trivializing the term of refugee is not only misleading but also dangerous. Eventually, the activists will turn to the Geneva Convention to demand that displaced populations be treated as refugees. But the Geneva Convention is not an appropriate tool to address the plight of these people. Moreover, we can not extend the status of refugees to include those people without losing the credibility and efficiency. Following the path taken by activists would lead us to give equal treatment to climate refugees and political refugees, which is a mistake. Our hypothesis is that the inhabitants of small island countries, in contrast to other populations require a broadening of the Geneva Convention. We shall argue that we have duties and responsibilities to them that we do not have to political refugees. To defend this view, we must clearly define what a climate refugee is and justify this term. We must therefore confront the notion of climate refugee to other competing concepts. Once the terms are defined, we will consider the ethical issues through the prism of global justice issues. We will see that it is not enough to refer to causal responsibility to determine the members who should address the plight of climate refugees. This will lead us to argue that although attractive, the polluter pays principle is not an appropriate tool to guide our reflection. We will also be led to question the relevance of a global environmental institution.

Depuis quelques années, le réchauffement climatique est un thème qui fait l’objet de plusieurs débats houleux. Mais à l’heure actuelle, il est difficile d’affirmer avec certitude que le réchauffement climatique et les catastrophes qui se multiplient, ces derniers temps, en sont les conséquences évidentes. Toutefois, il ne fait l’ombre d’aucun doute que ces catastrophes naturelles ou celles d’origine anthropique ont des incidences avérées sur l’environnement et le milieu de vie humain. C’est le cas dans le Pacifique avec les îles du Tuvalu exposées à la montée du niveau de la mer, à l’érosion et même à la disparition. C’est aussi le cas dans le Sahel avec le lac Tchad qui, en raison d’une baisse de la pluviométrie, de la sécheresse et d’une mauvaise gestion de ses eaux, connait un rétrécissement inquiétant, obligeant ainsi, des milliers de personnes à migrer dans l’espace du bassin conventionnel du lac Tchad partagé entre le Nigéria, le Niger, le Cameroun et le Tchad. Ces mouvements internes et transfrontaliers mal encadrés sont sources de tensions et d’insécurité. Cette situation semble peu préoccuper les pays touchés, moins encore les pays riches et la communauté internationale, qui en l’absence de tout cadre juridico-humanitaire et d’un statut protecteur international, montrent peu de signe d’empressement pour trouver des solutions afin d’assister les réfugiés et déplacés climatiques et environnementaux qui risquent d’être lésés dans leur droit à la vie et à une vie décente. En raison du vide juridique au niveau international, il serait souhaitable de faire un état des lieux des possibilités actuelles de protection juridique universelle et régionale avant de revenir vers des pistes de solutions adaptées aux besoins spécifiques de l’Afrique par le biais de l’Union Africaine. Une option audacieuse mais qui vaut la peine en raison du contexte actuel qui impose une recherche de solutions scientifiques et juridiques pouvant aider à l’action des décideurs politiques. / In recent years, global warming has been the subject of several heated debates. But, it is currently difficult to affirm with certainty that global warming and the increase in natural disasters in recent times are the obvious consequences. However, there is no doubt that these natural disasters or those caused by human activities have a proven impact on the environment and the living environment. This is the case in the Pacific with the Tuvalu islands which have been exposed to rising sea levels, erosion and even extinction. This is also the case in the Sahel region where due to a decline in rainfall, drought and poor management of its waters, the Lake Chad is experiencing a disturbing contraction, forcing thousands of people whose life depends on it to migrate in the space of the conventional basin of Lake Chad shared between Nigeria, Niger, Cameroon and Chad. These poorly managed internal and cross-border movements are sources of tension and insecurity. This situation does not appear to be of sufficient concern to the countries affected by these changes, and even less to the developed countries and the international community, which in the absence of any legal and humanitarian framework and international protective status, show no signs of eagerness to find temporary or permanent solutions to assist climate and environmental refugees and environmentally displaced persons whomay be harmed in their right to life and decent life. Due to the current legal vacuum at the international level, it would be desirable to take stock of the current possibilities of universal and regional legal protection before returning to possible solutions adapted to the specific needs of Africa, through the African Union. This is a bold but worthwhile option because of the current context that requires a search for scientific and legal solutions that can help policy makers.

This thesis aimed to, with the help of a case study, investigate and discuss state responsibility towards climate refugees. The state of Tuvalu was selected because of their vulnerability as a low-lying island state. This was fulfilled by on-site study how the state Tuvalu acted to climate threats, determine if the future migrants from Tuvalu can be counted as climate refugees and find out if they are by that definition included by the UN Refugee Convention. The result indicated that the state of Tuvalu is adapting to climate threats, that in the future the population can be seen as climate refugees, if they are forced from their homes due to climate change, and that they, despite that definition, can not be included by the UN Refugee Convention. The study also indicates a need for greater international protection of climate refugees by, for example, an expansion of the UN Refugee Convention so that these vulnerable people do not fall into oblivion due to a question of definition.