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There Is No Legal Protection for Climate Change Refugees—and That's Inexcusable [PSMag.com]

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Ioane Teitiota could have been the world’s first officialclimate change refugee. The subsistence fisherman re-located from the low-lying Pacific island of Kiribati to New Zealand in 2007, purportedly to escape the effects of climate change, which will soon make his home uninhabitable. Seeing no legal basis to grant Teitiota refugee status in New Zealand, the judiciary rejected his petition for residency, and the country’s high court sent him back to Kiribati on September 23 of this year.

Australia and New Zealand are among the first countries to face petitions from so-called climate refugees because of their location in the Pacific. Small island nations like Kiribati andTuvalu, where saltwater has infiltrated once-fertile soils and may soon submerge much of their landmass, are close neighbors to the Aussies and Kiwis. But climate change migrants won’t be landing only there. Soon they will drift across the globe, reaching American shores and courts—but no legal system is prepared to handle the inevitable wave.

 

[For more of this story, written by Brian Palmer, go to http://www.psmag.com/nature-an...nd-thats-inexcusable]

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