Open AccessResponsibility and Climate-induced Displacement
Author(s) -
Jamie Draper
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
global justice
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 1835-6842
DOI - 10.21248/gjn.11.02.182
Subject(s) - miller , global justice , normative , obligation , argument (complex analysis) , appeal , law and economics , economic justice , climate justice , political science , international law , immigration , state responsibility , work (physics) , scope (computer science) , compensation (psychology) , climate change , sociology , environmental ethics , law , social psychology , psychology , philosophy , computer science , mechanical engineering , ecology , biochemistry , chemistry , biology , programming language , engineering
This paper addresses the phenomenon of climate-induced displacement. I argue that there is scope for an account of asylum as compensation owed to those displaced by the impacts of climate change which needs only to appeal to minimal normative commitments about the requirements of global justice. I demonstrate the possibility of such an approach through an examination of the work of David Miller. Miller is taken as an exemplar of a broadly ‘international libertarian’ approach to global justice, and his work is a useful vehicle for this project because he has an established view about both responsibility for climate change and about the state’s right to exclude would-be immigrants. In the course of the argument, I set out the relevant aspects of Miller’s views, reconstruct an account of responsibility for the harms faced by climate migrants which is consistent with Miller’s views, and demonstrate why such an account yields an obligation to provide asylum as a form of compensation to ‘climate migrants.’