State Responsibility for Climate Change under the UNFCCC Regime: Challenges and Opportunities for Prevention and Redress

Climate change increasingly affects human mobility worldwide. Environmental degradation linked to this phenomenon undermines livelihood security, especially for rural communities, who are then pushed to resort to migration as an adaption strategy. Moreover, climate change causes natural disasters such as severe storms, floods and droughts, with the consequent displacement of affected populations. The pressing need to address these issues was also acknowledged by the Conference of the Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change on the occasion of the adoption of the 2016 Paris Agreement. The creation of a dedicated Task Force on Displacement and the framing of climate-change related displacement as loss and damage in this context constitute an acknowledgement that human displacement as a result of climate change cannot be avoided or prevented through mitigation or adaptation efforts. However, these developments far from settle crucial questions in this field, concerning state accountability and responsibility for causing environmental damage in breach of the UNFCCC regime and other sources of international environmental law. This paper focuses on such a matter, with specific reference to two main questions. First, it reflects on the allocation of responsibility for a global problem such as climate change, enquiring on which kind of state responsibility, if any, may be referred to climate-change related events such as human displacement. Second, it analyses the potential of international law principles - such as the prohibition of transboundary harm, the polluter pays principle and the precautionary principle - to provide protection and redress to persons displaced by climate change-related events.