One of the key challenges stemming from climate change will be climate displacement, as sudden and gradual events disrupt livelihoods and force millions to leave their homes. Despite the existing scholarship’s focus on cross-border movement, the majority of climate displaced people will move internally instead of or before seeking refuge outside their nation’s borders. What obligations do states owe to their citizens when those states have historically not been emitters but have still failed to protect domestic populations from displacement related to environmental disasters and climate change impacts? Through exploring the disaster management framework in Colombia and conducting a case study of the town of Gramalote, this talk discusses the obligations that states like Colombia owe to their internally displaced populations in the context of climate change. Given the inexorability and foreseeability of climate displacement, this talk argues that states have an obligation to recognize climate displacement, plan ahead to protect their populations’ rights, and implement best practices under international human rights law throughout relocation and resettlement processes. Irrespective of the driver of displacement, displaced individuals should not be subject to a bifurcated regime of protection that treats displacement due to civil disruption, violence, or armed conflict distinctly from displacement in the context of climate change and environmental disasters.

About the Speaker
Camila Bustos is an Assistant Professor at the Elisabeth Haub School of Law at Pace University. Before joining Haub Law, Professor Bustos was a Visiting Assistant Professor of Human Rights at Trinity College and a Clinical Supervisor in human rights practice at the University Network for Human Rights. She also served as a term law clerk to Justice Steven D. Ecker of the Connecticut Supreme Court and as a consultant with the International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP).

Professor Bustos graduated from Yale Law School, where she received the Francis Wayland Prize and was a Switzer Foundation Fellow and a Paul & Daisy Soros Fellow. She worked at the Center for Climate Integrity, the Climate Litigation Network, and EarthRights International during law school. Professor Bustos also co-founded Law Students for Climate Accountability, a national law student-led movement pushing the legal industry to phase out fossil fuel representation and support a just, livable future. Prior to law school, she worked as a human rights researcher at the Center for the Study of Law, Justice, and Society (Dejusticia) in Colombia.

Professor Bustos’s research and scholarship focus on human rights law, environmental law, legal ethics, and climate change law.

Host
Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies

Co-sponsor
Migrations Program
Cornell Law School
Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability