‘환경 이주민’ 보호에 관한 국제법적 논의 : 개념정의 및 제도설정을 중심으로 = How to Conceptualize and Protect Environmental Migrants in the International Framework

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Environmental migration is an imminent crisis. As global climate change has set forward, disaster-induced displacement has been highly increasing. Moreover, people are forced to move in order to escape from the adverse effects of climate change, such as sea-level rise, desertification and environmental degradation.
International discussion on environmental migration has emerged in the early 1980s. In the beginning, the terminology “environmental refugees” was introduced mainly in order to emphasize the severe outcome of climate change. However, the word “environmental refugee” has been broadly criticized, because it has no basis in international refugee law and it might invoke an incorrect and misleading understanding of the refugee statement. Nowadays, the term “environmental migrants” or “environmentally displaced persons” is more frequently used in the international framework.
Since the Nansen Conference in 2011, there have been vigorous international discussions on new approaches to address the environmental migration issue. These new approaches aim to develop and improve effective practices that could be used by states and regional communities in order to respond to disaster displacement risks and climate change-induced migration, maintaining connections with international humanitarian laws and its protection scheme.
This article contains the following discussions. First, the criticism of the terminology “environmental refugee” and the suggested alternative concept “environmental migrants” will be introduced. Second, in order to clarify the blind spots of environmental migrants protection, the existing protection of the environmental migrants would be examined. Finally, the study will suggest the strategy how to solve the environmental migration problem institutionally. For the final discussion, the conflict on the ideological basis of environmental migrants protection and the international approaches which have been carried out in the past decade are summarized.