Burak Güneş

Following the publication of the Winter 2021 special issue, "Climate Change and Migration," Insight Turkey organized a panel attended by academics who are experts in the field and examined the issue in depth.

We hope that Insight Turkey panel on Climate change and Migration will bring a fresh and useful perspective in understanding one of the biggest environmental challenges facing the world and its effects on humans.

This commentary discusses how the latest resolution adopted by the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC), recognizing “The Human Right to a Safe, Clean, Healthy and Sustainable Environment,” paves the way for a juridico-political argument over Climate-induced problems. First and foremost in this piece, the climate change-related refugee movement is examined from a critical perspective. Additionally, the paper also asserts that the issue of ‘climate refugees’ is neglected, and climate-induced migration challenges the current international migration framework. Therefore, this commentary seeks to investigate the impacts and relevance of international law and politics on ‘climate refugees’ in the case of the Republic of Haiti. Lastly, the paper offers practical solutions for those displaced by environmental factors.

This paper aims to lay out the challenges and potentially fatal conflicts inherent in the emerging attempts to respect state sovereignty while crafting progressive and truly responsive sets of approaches to a sui generis global problem like the climate crisis. It examines general approaches and practices on climate refugees within the scope of a critical legal framework, taking as an example the ‘Ioane Teitiota’ case that attracted public attention as an international issue starting in 2013. In addition, we will examine from a legal viewpoint and with an eye to future consequences, the January 2020 United Nations’ historical decision on climate refugees. We adopt Martti Koskennimi’s terms, ascending and descending justifications, to show the oscillation that the legal mind experiences in between order and will. In this paper, we will claim that the legal mind fights a battle that eventually ends up with a deadlock due to the very structure of modern law.