Abstract
In 1985, Egyptian researcher Essam El-Hinnawi coined the term "environmental refugee" for the United Nations Environment Programme. Forty years later, this status still does not exist in international law. The 1951 Geneva Convention, drafted in the post-war period, recognizes as refugees only those fleeing political, religious or ethnic persecution. Those forced into exile by rising waters, drought or the destruction of their homeland have no legal refuge.
Yet there's nothing new about this phenomenon. History is littered with mass displacements linked to environmental upheavals : the Great Irish Famine of 1840s, the American Dust Bowl of 1930s, and closer to home, Hurricane Katrina in 2005, which revealed just how much climate-related disasters hit the poorest and most vulnerable first. Today, the World Bank estimates that climate disruption could force up to 216 million people to move within their own country by 2050.
Faced with this reality, a major contradiction is emerging: climate policies sometimes encourage mobility as an adaptation strategy, while migration policies seek to restrict it. Who will welcome those whom the Earth exiles? Who will welcome those exiled by our climatic irresponsibility? What geographical, legal and moral boundaries are we ready to redraw?
This round-table discussion, led by students from Sorbonne University, will bring together historians, political scientists and legal experts to consider climate migration in all its historical depth and contemporary urgency, and to raise the question of hospitality as a political challenge of the century 21st century.
