Are existing legal frameworks adequate for climate-driven crises?
Author: Pragya Vashishth
In the 21st century, where humanity has achieved technological milestones like quantum computing, artificial intelligence, and advanced space exploration, dealing with the climate still remains an obstacle. While humanity explores on the moon & robotic missions explore Mars, the world constantly faces problems like an increase in temperature, a rise in sea level, and the extinction of species.
Global organizations take initiatives and introduce policies to address the growing challenges caused by the ever-changing climate. The Paris Agreement and Kyoto Protocol try to balance environmental protection with economic advancement to protect the climate by reducing greenhouse emissions while economies thrive, but the question remains the same: Are these international laws adequate or still effective to adapt to and mitigate climate change and still guarantee technological and economical development?
The continued increase in greenhouse emissions has transformed climate change from an environmental concern into a global challenge. As the planet warms, several regions of Africa constantly face droughts, glaciers are losing mass in Antarctica, and the Amazon Rainforest increasingly experiences extreme floods and droughts.
Due to these conditions, not only does the world face economic and environmental damage but human communities and tribes bear severe consequences. Many species disappear even before they are discovered by scientists, and the exact statistics of the biodiversity loss remain uncertain. Meanwhile, the communities living in highly vulnerable regions end up becoming “climate refugees.”
“Climate refugees” are people or communities who are forced to leave their homes due to adverse effects of climate change. Despite being “refugees,” they are not legally recognized as refugees by the United Nations, as the 1951 Refugee Convention defines a “refugee” as someone who, “owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of [their] nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail [themself] of the protection of that country”*; and therefore, many communities, like those of Tuvalu and Kiribati have turned into climate refugees.
Tuvalu, a Polynesian island country, consists of nine low-lying coral islands. Out of which six are true atolls, and five of them lie less than five meters above sea level, making Tuvalu one of the world’s lowest-lying nations. As the global temperature rises, Tuvalu has been facing frequent coastal flooding and stronger king tides since the early 2000s. Saltwater seeped into the islands’ freshwater aquifers, contaminating drinking water and making agriculture extremely difficult. Over time, the habitable land shrank, floods became more frequent, and Tuvalu’s closeness to the sea was seen as a threat to their nation’s security.
In 2023, Tuvalu sought international cooperation, and recognizing the growing threat and the lack of legal protection for climate refugees, Tuvalu signed the Falepili Union Treaty with Australia, creating a special migration pathway in Australia that would allow 280 Tuvaluans every year to move to Australia. Though the treaty promises Tuvalu its sovereignty, it raises a profound question: Can a country can remain sovereign when it has no land? And can the people truly claim to be Tuvaluans when Tuvalu becomes uninhabitable?
Global organisations continue to introduce climate policies to combat climate change, but an important question remains: do these measures create equal responsibility for all nations, or do they unintentionally reinforce historical inequalities rooted in colonialism and unequal economic development?
The European Union introduced CBAM (Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism) which is a policy tool that applies a carbon price to imported goods to ensure they face equivalent carbon costs as domestic products, aiming to reduce global emissions and prevent carbon leakage. The EU argues that it prevents “carbon leakage” but critics often describe it as green hypocrisy.
The mechanism only applies to certain goods imported into Europe; while producers within Europe are only subject to EU E.T.S., which permits the industries to buy emission allowances. Ironically, many of the wealthy countries which are a part of the European Union are those which are developed and industrialised over centuries, by establishing colonies in parts of Asia and Africa and extracting their required resources for development from these colonies.
Now that developing countries are trying to grow economically, they are being imposed with such mechanisms. Can climate mechanisms like the CBAM actually be considered equitable or called “green laws” when they only apply to developing countries?
Environmental laws and international initiatives such as the Paris Agreement continuously face challenges in implementation, while countries across the world face national threats from these climate forces. Countries endure existential threats while organisations like the UN struggle to develop additional mechanisms alongside the Paris Agreement, and millions lose their homes. Ecosystems are disrupted and countless species lose their habitats. As some nations face sea level rise, others face severe droughts and scarcity of water, will international law evolve fast enough to be adequate and keep nations secure?
