Protection Of Environmental Refugees In International Law

Today, the deteriorating global environment, making droughts, floods,desertification and rising sea levels and other environmental problems emerging invarious regions of the world,"environmental refugees" are thus generated.Environmental refugees is no longer a regional problem, the growing flood ofenvironmental refugees serious threat to the development of human society. As of2006, the total number of environmental refugees worldwide has reached twenty-fivemillion,58per cent of the total number of refugees worldwide. Relevant UnitedNations agencies predicted that this number will increase to150million in2050. Ifsuch a large refugee population has been without legal protection and assistance of theinternational community, it will become the largest global unrest one of the factorswhich lead to social unrest. In this paper, based on the international law ofenvironmental refugees and problems of document analysis and regulatory analysis toanalyze and propose measures to improve and suggestions.Currently, none of the Refugee Convention and Protocol on Refugees intoenvironmental refugees "refugee" category, meaning that environmental refugees arenot subject to protection under international law, can not be as law enforcementassistance under the constraint like "Refugee Convention." But this does not meanthat the environment is no legal basis for refugee protection in other relevantinternational law and conventions, we can still find a legal basis for the protection ofenvironmental refugees. And, regardless of whether the refugee definition should beexpanded, if the expansion is only from the perspective of human rights protectionand environmental justice perspective, environmental refugees should be takenseriously, it should be the protection of fundamental rights by the international law.Therefore, it is necessary to improve the path of environmental refugeesprotected by international law. Specifically, in theory, including the signing of aregional environmental refugee protection treaty, bilateral or multilateral reciprocity;practice, including the strengthening of international human rights law, the protectionof international environmental law; establish environmental refugee reliefCompensation Fund; draft "Environmental Protection Convention refugees"; improvethe ability of UNHCR’s protection and so on. Of course, protection is not a matter ofenvironmental refugees overnight, nor rely solely on the sovereignty of the State orinternational organization can be achieved, the international community must unite together to solve the problem of environmental refugees.