The climate is changing, generating increasingly significant migration flows. Yet the climate change-migration nexus is scarcely reflected in the relevant legislation of the European Union. This article argues that the EU needs to address this nexus coherently for its migration and climate actions to be effective. To this end, three avenues might be feasible: EU institutions could promote an extensive application of existing protection instruments; the European Court of Justice could expansively interpret asylum and migration provisions in light of potential environmental threats to migrants' rights; and within the framework of the New Pact on Migration and Asylum, EU institutions could encourage the revision of the Common European Asylum System by making explicit reference to the environmental causes of migration.
Although overlooked in the literature so far, Italy has already developed all three of these avenues to foster protection against environmental causes of migration and may provide helpful insights for the supranational level.
Chiara Scissa is a PhD candidate in Law at the Institute of Law, Politics and Development (DIRPOLIS) at Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies in Pisa (Italy) with a research project on environmental migration, trafficking in human beings, and man-made disasters. Since June 2022, she has been appointed as Expert in International Protection and Human Rights at the Territorial Commission for International Protection of Brescia (Italy). Previously, she was Visiting Scholar at the Centre for European and Comparative Legal Studies at the University of Copenhagen (Denmark), Visiting Researcher at the Institute for Migration Studies at the Lebanese American University in Beirut (Lebanon) as well as at the Migration, Environment and Climate Change Division of IOM Regional Office in Vienna (Austria). Beyond the climate change-migration nexus, her research interests include migration and asylum law, vulnerability and migrant children’s rights.
The event is organised by the EUI Environmental Challenges and Climate Change Governance cluster in cooperation with the European Journal of Legal Studies.