Climate change discourse and climate refugees

Dina-Kristin Midtflø and Lasse Hansen, both master students at Department of Comparative Politics, and connected to the CliMPS-network will present their master theses, that will be finished in June. This seminar will be an oppurtunity for us to hear about their research, and for them to get feedback before they deliver.

Dina Midtflø writes this about her thesis:

How can the world community adapt to people displaced due to climate change?

Estimates have been as high as 200 million people displaced due to climate change by 2050. Yet, there are no legal protection for those displaced outside their own state. In my master thesis I look at what I perceive to be two of the issues with international climate change displacement, human rights and sovereignty. Further, seeing that there is no protection regime for climate displaced and that terms like “climate refugee” and “environmental refugee” are not judicial correct terms, I look at how they have been defined. Lastly I look at proposed alternatives and how they fill the “protection gap” (human rights) and relates to sovereignty, examples include making a new convention on climate refugees, a protocol to the UNFCCC and climate change insurance.

Lasse writes this about his thesis:

Chains of climate Change Discourse on Kiribati

The thesis focuses on the interaction between the Kiribati government and other political actors on climate change. The tentative results from fieldwork carried out on Fiji and Kiribati earlier this year indicates that climate change is not widely discussed in the country. This is interesting, as the government is quite vocal on the subject internationally.