Environmental Refugees: Rising Oceans Threaten Islanders

What rights do a people have if their land is engulfed by rising oceans? Where do they go? What status are they entitled to? Do they maintain their membership in the U.N.? Mineral rights? Fishing rights?

These are all questions being raised by scholars studying climate change law. The reality of rising oceans has propeled this area of law in universities and among scholars worldwide.

The urgency of developing international law on this issue is understandable as many islands are threatened with uninhabitability in the near future, beginning perhaps with Carteret Island of Papau, New Guinea, which could be underwater as soon as 2015! And it's not only islands that are threatened. As we solemnly witness flood refugees displaced from their land in Pakistan, India, China and elsewhere, this problem is becoming more and more widespread on our continents as well.

The prospect of relocating thousands, if not millions, of environmental refugees is truely a monumental problem that must solved. What happens to the people who lose their homes to climate change?

I read this article in yesterday's New York Times on the dilemma:

http://www.nytimes.com/cwire/2010/08/23/23climatewire-if-a-country-sinks-beneath-the-sea-is-it-sti-70169.html?pagewanted=1

Thanks for reading!