Climate change is redrawing the map of human movement as much as it is reshaping the world’s ecological systems. With millions already displaced by climate disasters, our global community is facing a complex “polycrisis” where environmental degradation, systemic inequality, and outdated legal structures collide. Efforts to address climate migration and displacement must grapple not only with environmental change, but also with the structural, legal, policy, and social conditions that shape vulnerability and response. It’s time to redefine what true climate justice looks like.
Berkeley Law students in the Climate Migration & Displacement Project have partnered with us to launch an essay series exploring how structural inequalities intersect with climate justice, legal accountability, and litigation strategies. In their essays, they unpack the gaps in our system and highlight pathways toward a more equitable future:
- Unequal Burdens: In Search of Legal Remedies for Climate Migration & Displacement (By Raquel Acosta and Jacob Lusk)
- How Guatemala Can Implement the Inter-American Court of Human Rights’ Landmark Opinion on the Global Climate Crisis (By Rachel Rood-Ojalvo)
- Preempting Violence: Rethinking the Posture of Climate Displacement in Asylum Law (By Wesley McCormick)
- Identifying Protection Gaps in International Law for Climate-Displaced Women (Jessie Boswell)
- Typhoon Halong as a Test of U.S. Compliance with International Displacement Standards (Lily Moser)
- Litigating Intergenerational Protections for Indigenous Children in Guatemala (Kimmy Pantoja and unnamed co-author)
This series is a project of the Climate Migration & Displacement Project, a student-powered Berkeley Law pro bono project that supports innovative litigation and policy research to secure rights and protections for populations displaced by climate disasters.