Iole Fontana (PhD)1
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Este escrito compõe a Série Especial do Boletim Lua Nova, em conjunto com pesquisadores e pesquisadoras vinculados à rede internacional Justice in the XXI Century: A Perspective from Latin America (JUSTLA). O projeto, coordenado pela Universidade de Catania (Itália) e financiado pela União Europeia no âmbito da ação HORIZON–Marie Skłodowska-Curie Staff Exchanges, reúne 148 integrantes de 18 instituições da América Latina e da União Europeia.
Os escritos são um convite a atravessar diferentes territórios do conhecimento para (re)pensar a justiça no século XXI. Ao longo da série, o JUSTLA promove um diálogo entre pesquisas desenvolvidas em diferentes contextos e abordagens, de modo que o leitor e a leitora poderão acompanhar um movimento no qual ideias, contextos e práticas se entrelaçam para reinventar, no presente, o sentido da justiça. Os textos do Especial podem ser conferidos aqui.
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Climate change is often discussed in terms of temperatures, emissions, and extreme weather events. Yet rising sea levels, prolonged droughts, desertification, and increasingly frequent floods are not only environmental phenomena: they are also powerful drivers of global human mobility. These processes do not affect all regions equally. Instead, they reshape where and how people can live in profoundly unequal ways, forcing difficult decisions about whether to remain in place or move elsewhere. In 2023 alone, more than 26.3 million people were displaced by climate-related hazards.
Climate change rarely acts as the sole cause of migration. However, environmental pressures can amplify and exacerbate existing vulnerabilities, such as poverty, economic hardship, fragile livelihoods, political instability, and conflict, until staying in a place becomes no longer a viable option. When agricultural land becomes unproductive, when water sources disappear, or when entire coastal areas become uninhabitable because they are slowly swallowed by the sea, moving may become a strategy of survival. People move in search of safety, income, or stability when their environment can no longer provide the basic conditions for a dignified life.
Yet, despite growing recognition that climate change contributes to displacement, those who move—or attempt to move—because of environmental pressures remain largely unprotected. Their experiences reveal a critical blind spot in global responses to climate change: while responsibility for emissions reduction and climate adaptation is increasingly debated, responsibility for protecting those displaced by climate impacts remains unclear, contested, or simply ignored. This is where the link between climate change and migration becomes, fundamentally, a question of justice.
Climate Change, migration, and unequal responsibility
At the heart of climate justice lies a simple but uncomfortable reality: the impacts of climate change and the capacities to cope with it are profoundly unequal. In this context, climate-related migration should be understood not merely as a response to environmental pressures, but as a symptom of climate injustice for at least two reasons.
First, it reflects unequal exposure to harm. The communities most affected by rising seas, prolonged droughts, desertification, and extreme weather, —many of them in the Global South—are often those that have contributed the least to the greenhouse gas emissions driving global warming. They stand on the frontlines of a crisis they did little to create, and yet they are among those most affected and most compelled to move. In this sense, migration becomes one of the ways in which global climate inequalities materialize geographically. Movements may take the form of internal displacement within countries, but they can also cross borders—across regions or internationally, including toward wealthier states in the Global North. This disparity is not accidental; it reflects long-standing global disparities rooted in colonial histories, uneven development, resource extraction, and unequal access to wealth and protection.
Second, climate-related migration exposes unequal capacity to adapt. Some countries and communities have the financial resources, infrastructure, and institutional strength to protect their populations—by building flood defenses, investing in irrigation systems, strengthening social safety nets, or diversifying their economies. Others do not. The same climate shock that can be managed in one context can become devastating in another. And, most often, the very same communities that are most affected are also those least equipped to adapt. Where public institutions are fragile and resources limited, environmental stress quickly translates into livelihood collapse and displacement. In such cases, mobility reveals how climate burdens and adaptive possibilities are distributed unevenly across the globe.
These inequalities raise fundamental questions of responsibility. Climate justice is not only about reducing emissions or investing in green technologies; it is also about recognizing who bears the social, economic, and human costs of environmental change, and who has the power and resources to cope with them. While climate justice debates increasingly recognize responsibility for environmental harm, they often fall short of addressing responsibility for its human consequences and for the people who are displaced as a result. The question of whether, how, and by whom climate-related migrants have to be protected remains largely unanswered.
When environmental displacement meets a protection gap
Despite increasing attention to climate change as a driver of displacement, people who move for environmental reasons often fall into a political and legal grey zone—especially when they cross international borders.
Climate impacts are rarely considered as legitimate or central grounds for moving and for being protected, even when environmental degradation has made staying impossible. In many countries of the Global North, people displaced in the context of climate change are often grouped with the so-called ‘economic migrants’ and treated primarily as policy challenges to manage or security risks to contain. They are rarely recognized as individuals whose movement is rooted in global inequalities and in a shared responsibility for a warming planet. Their displacement is depoliticized, reduced to numbers or ‘flows’ to be controlled, rather than understood as part of a broader justice question. This creates what I call the ‘Climate Protection Paradox’: not only are those least responsible for climate change among those most affected by its impacts, but when they attempt to move in search of safety, they encounter closed borders and few avenues for protection.
There is no clear or legally recognized definition for ‘climate refugee’. International refugee law, designed in the aftermath of the Second World War and codified in the 1951 Geneva Convention, protects those fleeing persecution on specific grounds such as race, religion, or political opinion. Environmental degradation and climate-related harm do not easily fit within this framework. As a result, people displaced by climate impacts are rarely recognized as entitled to international protection. Their ability to cross borders, stay legally, or access rights often depends not on a clear legal entitlement, but on the political discretion of individual states.
In some cases, governments have introduced temporary or humanitarian measures in response to sudden disasters. After the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, for example, the Dominican Republic allowed thousands of Haitians to enter its territory, while Canada fast-tracked visas for family reunification. Following the 2023 earthquakes in Syria and Turkey, several countries introduced short-term visas or humanitarian programs for people from the affected areas. In 2022, Argentina adopted one of the first regional humanitarian programs explicitly aimed at people displaced from neighboring countries due to socio-natural disasters. In 2023, Italy introduced a special protection permit for natural disasters, but limited it only to ‘contingent and exceptional’ situations, renewable only up to six months, and with no possibility of conversion into a work permit.
These initiatives show that protection is possible. But they also reveal its limits. Most of these measures are temporary, discretionary, and designed for sudden, high-visibility events such as earthquakes, hurricanes, or floods. They are often short-term solutions, dependent on political will and easily reversed. But what happens in the case of slow-onset processes?
Rising sea levels, desertification, soil degradation, and prolonged drought do not produce dramatic headlines. They unfold gradually, reshaping livelihoods and eroding living conditions over time. People affected by these processes may not be fleeing a single catastrophic event, but the slow collapse of viable living conditions. Yet precisely because these changes are gradual, they rarely trigger emergency protection schemes.
The result is another layer of exclusion. Those displaced by slow-onset climate impacts often find themselves without clear legal recognition and without targeted protection pathways. Their movement may be just as necessary as that triggered by sudden disasters—but it is far less likely to be acknowledged as such.
The Injustice of Being Unable to Move
Climate injustice is not expressed only through forced mobility. It is also expressed through enforced immobility. Not everyone who is affected by climate change has the resources to leave. Migration requires money, information, networks, and physical ability. The poorest, the elderly, and the most marginalized are often those least able to relocate, even when environmental conditions deteriorate. They may remain trapped in areas exposed to rising seas, extreme heat, or desertification, not because they choose to stay, but because they lack the means to move.
In this sense, climate injustice operates at both ends of the mobility spectrum. Some are forced to move without protection. Others are forced to stay without safety. The ability to move safely—and the ability to remain safely—are both shaped by inequality. Recognizing this tension complicates simplistic narratives that frame climate mobility only as a future ‘mass migration’ threat. It reminds us that justice is not only about managing flows, but about ensuring that people have real choices: to stay, to adapt, or to move with dignity.
Rethinking climate justice through protection
Climate justice debates often focus on future risks and long-term solutions: emission reductions, green transitions, adaptation funds, and technological innovation. Yet for many people, the effects of climate change are already a present reality. Forced mobility linked to environmental degradation is not a distant scenario—it is unfolding now, often in silence and without adequate recognition. Addressing this reality requires a multilevel approach.
First, it needs to move beyond emergency responses and toward more predictable, rights-based approaches to protection. Climate justice cannot be limited to preventing future harm; it must also respond fairly when harm has already occurred. This means acknowledging that climate justice is inseparable from questions of global inequality, historical responsibility, and access to rights. Therefore, asking ‘who protects people when the environment forces them to move’ exposes the limits of current approaches to both climate policy and migration governance. Without a broader perspective, climate justice risks remaining incomplete— focused on emission and adaptation, while leaving those forced to move at the margins of protection.
Second, mobility itself must be rethought. Recognizing movement as part of climate adaptation challenges policy responses that prioritize containment over protection. It invites a rethinking of responsibility, one that includes not only financial support for mitigation and adaptation, but also legal and political commitments to protect those who are displaced. This does not mean opening borders without limits. It means expanding safe and legal pathways and ensuring the asylum systems are flexible enough to respond to climate-related harms. Climate justice cannot be confined to environmental policy alone but must extend to migration and asylum systems, which play a crucial role in shaping who is protected and who is left to face environmental harm without support.
Third, justice also requires attention to those who cannot move. Climate change produces not only forced mobility but also forced immobility. Many of the poorest and most marginalized lack the resources to relocate, even when environmental conditions become dangerous. A just approach must therefore invest also in strengthening local resilience and community-led strategies that allow people to remain safely where they are–-if they choose to do so.
Fourth, climate injustice is not only about unequal exposure to harm. It is also about unequal voice and recognition. The communities most affected by climate change are frequently marginalized from decision-making processes at national and global levels, where priorities are set and resources allocated. Their experiences, knowledge, and needs are often underrepresented in climate governance, adaptation planning, and migration policy debates. As a result, policies tend to reflect the perspectives and interests of those least affected, while those living with its consequences have limited influence over the solutions designed in their name.
Finally, even within the current limits of international law and without creating a new global treaty on ‘climate refugees’, governments have room to act. They can expand the interpretation of existing protection frameworks to account for environmental harm when it seriously threatens life and dignity. They can develop complementary forms of protection for people displaced by disasters and slow-onset environmental degradation. They can create humanitarian visas, temporary protection schemes, or regional agreements that provide predictable legal status rather than ad hoc, short-term solutions. They can also invest in planned relocation programs that are rights-based and community-led.
Perhaps most importantly, states can stop treating climate-related (im)mobility solely as a border management issue. When protection is addressed only through deterrence and containment, environmental crises are transformed into protection crises. A justice-oriented approach would recognize that responsibility does not end at the water’s edge or the border fence.
Climate justice, ultimately, is not only about stabilizing the planet. It is also about protecting the people whose lives are already being reshaped by a changing climate.
* Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are, however, those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or HORIZON-MSCA-2023-Staff Exchanges JUSTLA – Justice in the XXI Century: A Perspective from Latin America, Grant Agreement: 101183054. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.
** Este texto não reflete necessariamente as opiniões do Boletim Lua Nova ou do CEDEC. Gosta do nosso trabalho? Apoie o Boletim Lua Nova!
- Department of Political and Social Sciences, University of Catania, 2024-25 Fulbright Schuman Scholar, University of Texas at El Paso. ↩︎
