Environmental refugees and international legal protection: some considerations

Abstract

In recent decades the condition of the environment around the world is increasingly getting worse, the world population has been suffering from ecological disasters caused by centuries of exploitation of nature by man. In 2005 the United Nations University released a report that predicted that by 2010 the world would have more than 50 million environmental refugees. However and despite the growing number of environmental migrants, there isn’t, so far, an international regulation able to handle this situation. This article will examine the concept of refugees and the concept of environmental refugees, and also highlights the difficulties in the recognition of ecological migrants as refugees, proposing solutions to the problem of ecological refugees. Therefore, the main purpose of this paper is to awaken the law scholars and professionals for the relevance of the topic as well as stimulating debates on these issues and its solutions. Methodology employed is bibliographical, theoretical, descriptive, exploratory, dialectical and mainly inductive. This article, at the end, proposed as solution to the problem of environmental refugees the prevention of natural disasters, to allocate elsewhere the victims of ecological disasters, but in their original countries, and the use of the right to an ecologically balanced environment as the foundation of ethical and legal obligation of international ensure minimum rights and conditions for survival of this new class of refugees.