New Security Beat, the blog of the Wilson Center’s Environmental Change and Security Program, recently published Professor Maxine Burkett’s Justice and Contemporary Climate Relocation: An Addendum to Words of Caution on “Climate Refugees”.

Professor Burkett discusses the role climate change plays in the migration and displacement of populations, and the use of the term “climate refugees” to describe such people. There are migration and displacement scenarios that, she says, “beg concerted efforts from the policy community, and that underscore the importance of recognizing climate change as a unique, unprecedented, and increasingly formidable trigger”. While sea level rise and coastal flooding are serious problems that put entire communities at risk, she says “climate refugees” is not an appropriate term to use. She brings up an argument “for working towards some kind of framework that acknowledges the special climate-related circumstances faced by small-islanders and those displaced by government climate resilience programs – and the international community’s responsibilities to them”.

The full article can be accessed here.

On top of being one of our very own associate professors at the William S. Richardson School of Law, Professor Burkett also recently served as a Wilson Center public policy fellow.

To learn more about Professor Burkett and her work, visit her profile page here.