This paper aims to critically analyse the existing legal framework around human displacement as an effect of climate change, and to provide some suggestions for its reform.

It highlights that human displacement is one of the most complex effects of climate change to face, since it encompasses extremely delicate political topics, such as migration, protection of people in need and liability for climate change damage.

The paper is in three parts, the first of which gives a conceptual background for the understanding of the connections between climate change and migration (leading to the phenomenon of the so called ‘climate refugees’). The second part aims at showing that the legal instruments that may (potentially) protect affected persons are, as a matter of fact, currently not up to the task. The last section proposes some changes to the current rules so to make the protection of displaced persons more effective.

[Adapted from source]