Climate-Induced Displacement and the Politics of Refugee Recognition in International Law

Abstract

Climate change has emerged as one of the most consequential drivers of human displacement in the twenty-first century, yet international law has failed to develop a coherent, binding framework for recognising and protecting those who are forced to move because of environmental degradation, sea-level rise, and extreme weather events. This paper undertakes an analytical examination of the disjuncture between the empirical reality of climate-induced displacement and the normative architecture of international refugee law, particularly the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and its 1967 Protocol. Employing a doctrinal and policy-analytical method, the paper traces the evolution of soft-law instruments, regional conventions, and recent judicial pronouncements—including the UN Human Rights Committee's decision in Teitiota v. New Zealand and the International Court of Justice's 2025 Advisory Opinion on the Obligations of States in Respect of Climate Change—to argue that recognition of climate-displaced persons remains fundamentally a political rather than a purely legal question. The paper situates India as a central case study, given its status as one of the world's largest sites of disaster-induced internal displacement and its complex, non-signatory relationship with the international refugee regime. Through analysis of the Sundarbans, Assam, Bundelkhand, Marathwada, and Uttarakhand, the paper demonstrates how the absence of a national and international legal category for "climate refugees" produces cascading vulnerabilities, particularly for the rural poor, women, and marginalised castes and tribes. The paper concludes by proposing a multi-tiered reform agenda combining complementary protection mechanisms, regional cooperation frameworks modelled on the Kampala Convention, and domestic legislative innovation, while cautioning that legal reform alone cannot resolve what is, at its core, a politics of recognition shaped by sovereignty, burden-sharing anxieties, and global inequality.