‘Migrants in a Feverland’: State Obligations towards the Environmentally Displaced
| DOI | 10.3366/jipt.2012.0035 |
| Author | Megan Bradley |
| Published date | 01 April 2012 |
| Date | 01 April 2012 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
‘MIGRANTS IN A FEVERLAND’: STATE OBLIGATIONS
TOWARDS THE ENVIRONMENTALLY DISPLACED
MEGAN BRADLEY
Abstract: This paper considers whether states have a duty to accept those who
cross borders to escape environmental disasters associated with climate change.
It then examines how such a responsibility might be distributed, focusing on the
predicament of the citizens of small island states expected to be inundated by
rising sea levels. In assessing states’ responsibility to admit these individuals,
I draw on Walzer’s theory of mutual aid, demonstrating that even under this
narrow conception of states’ obligations, a duty to accept displaced islanders
can be established. However, the proximity principle is ill-suited to determining
which states should shoulder responsibility in this situation. Drawing on Miller’s
account of remedial responsibility and his ‘connection theory,’ I suggest that the
obligation to accept ‘environmental refugees’ should be shouldered principally
by affluent states that share significant degrees of causal and moral responsibility
for climate change, and also have particularly strong capacities to assist the
displaced.
Keywords: Climate change, displacement, environmental refugees, state
responsibility
‘In those first years the roads were peopled with refugees shrouded up in their clothing.
Wearing masks and goggles, sitting in their rags by the side of the road like ruined
aviators. Their barrows heaped with shoddy. Towering wagons or carts. Their eyes
bright in their skulls. Creedless shells of men tottering down the causeways like
migrants in a feverland. The frailty of everything revealed at last. Old and troubling
issues resolved into nothingness and night’. (McCarthy 2006: 28)
Even if an apocalyptic situation like Cormack McCarty’s vision in The
Road never comes to pass, the wreckage resulting from climate change may
Journal of International Political Theory, 8(1–2) 2012, 147–158
DOI: 10.3366/jipt.2012.0035
© Edinburgh University Press 2012
www.eupjournals.com/jipt
147
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