Having your homeland engulfed by the ocean because of climate change doesn’t make you a refugee, or so the High Court of New Zealand ruled last week when it dismissed the case of Ioane Teitiota, a man from the low-lying Pacific island nation of Kiribati. Refugee status is based in the need for “protection … from political or other forms of persecution,” and Teitiota sought to bend the definition by claiming he was “persecuted passively” by climate change. Had this argument prevailed, his case might have carried huge implications for the millions of people who could be displaced by rising sea levels in the coming decades. As the presiding judge wrote: “At a stroke, millions of people who are facing medium-term economic deprivation, or the immediate consequences of natural disasters or warfare, or indeed presumptive hardships caused by climate change, would be entitled to protection under the Refugee Convention.... It is not for the High Court of New Zealand to alter the scope of the Refugee Convention in that regard.”
Read more on New Republic: http://www.newrepublic.com/article/115777/climate-change-sinking-pacific-islands-should-us-take-migrants