DEREK R.

BELL

ENVIRONMENTAL REFUGEES:
WHAT RIGHTS? WHICH DUTIES?

ABSTRACT. It is estimated that there could be 200 million ‘environmental refugees’ by

the middle of this century. One major environmental cause of population displacement is
likely to be global climate change. As the situation is likely to become more pressing, it
is vital to consider now the rights of environmental refugees and the duties of the rest of
the world. However, this is not an issue that has been addressed in mainstream theories of
global justice. This paper considers the potential of two leading liberal theories of inter-
national justice to address the particular issues raised by the plight of potential and actual
environmental refugees. I argue that neither John Rawls’s ‘Law of Peoples’ approach nor
Charles Beitz’s ‘cosmopolitanism’ is capable of providing an adequate account of justice
in this context. Beitz’s theory does have some advantages over Rawls’s approach but it fails
to take proper account of the attachment that some people have to their own ‘home’.

KEY WORDS: Beitz, climate change, environmental justice, environmental refugees,

international justice, Rawls

The leaders of Tuvalu – a tiny island country in the Pacific Ocean midway
between Hawaii and Australia – have conceded defeat in their battle with the
rising sea, announcing that they will abandon their homeland.1

The plight of the Tuvaluans is only the most dramatic example of the
displacement of persons caused by environmental disruptions. The rise in
sea levels caused by global warming has caused lowland flooding, salt-
water intrusion, coastal erosion and more destructive storms in Tuvalu.2
It has become ‘an endangered nation’.3 However, sea level rise is only
one environmental cause of population displacement. Desertification,

I would like to thank the Leverhulme Trust for financial support for the project
of which this paper is a part. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the
‘International Justice in a Globalised World’ workshop, ISSEI Conference, Aberystwyth,
July 2002. I would like to thank the participants at the workshop for their very helpful
comments. I would also like to thank Simon Caney, Avner de-Shalit, Tim Gray, Peter Jones
and an anonymous reviewer for very helpful written comments.
1 L.R. Brown, Environmental Refugees (2002) at http://www.foes.org.au/ci/ci_ecoref.
htm.
2 Ibid.
3 Gayoom, cited in ibid.

Res Publica 10: 135–152, 2004.

© 2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.
136 DEREK R. BELL

deforestation, extreme storms, earthquakes, floods and a general decrease

in the productivity of land caused by poor management or climate change
can all cause people to move in search of the means of survival. Environ-
mental disruptions can come in many different forms. They may be
‘natural’ or ‘man-made’, ranging from cyclones to development projects
such as dams. They may be short-term or long-term, ranging from short
destructive storms or floods to the gradual encroachment of desert condi-
tions into previously productive territory. The result may be the same
whatever the cause: people forced by environmental circumstances to
move from the danger ‘at home’ to look for a safer place where they can
meet their basic needs.
In 1995, Norman Myers claimed that ‘there are at least 25 million
environmental refugees today, a total to be compared with 22 million
refugees of the traditional kind . . . . The total may well double by the
year 2010 if not before, as increasing numbers of impoverished people
press ever harder on over-loaded environments.’4 Myers warned that the
numbers could increase to 200 million people when rises in sea level
caused by global warming take effect by the middle of the twenty-first
century.5 For Myers, the choice for developed countries is simple: ‘export
the wherewithall for sustainable development for communities at risk – or
import growing numbers of environmental refugees’.6 However, there is a
third option: namely, adopt a ‘lifeboat ethic’, which treats environmental
refugees as a security problem for the developed world. Current policies –
high levels of consumption, resource use and waste production; low levels
of humanitarian aid; environmental degradation promoted by multinational
companies; and ever-tighter immigration and asylum policies – suggest
that the developed world has chosen the third option.
In this paper, I propose to consider how we should respond to the
plight of potential and actual environmental refugees. More specifically, I
will critically examine the implications of two leading (liberal) theories of
international justice for our policy on environmental refugees. Examining
these theories in the specific context of this issue not only offers the
prospect of developing insights into the rights of environmental refugees
in a just world order, but also provides an important test for the two
theories. Environmental problems – especially the kind of severe problems
that cause population displacement – are likely to become increasingly
important during the twenty-first century. Therefore a plausible theory of

4 N. Myers, Environmental Exodus: An Emergent Crisis in the Global Arena (Wash-

ington, DC: Climate Institute, 1995), 1.
5 Ibid.
6 Ibid., 13.
 ENVIRONMENTAL REFUGEES: WHAT RIGHTS? WHICH DUTIES? 137

international or global justice should have the capacity to address them.

So far, leading theories of international justice have not been systemati-
cally tested in this area and there has been little discussion of international
environmental justice.
This paper is divided into four sections. In section 1, I introduce the
idea of ‘environmental refugees’ and identify a particular case, victims of
global climate change, for discussion. In section 2, I consider the implica-
tions of John Rawls’s Law of Peoples for the situation of potential and
actual environmental refugees. Rawls conceives of a just world order as
a ‘society of peoples’: I argue that his approach is unable to deal with
the situation of environmental refugees because it takes neither natural
resources nor global interdependence sufficiently seriously. In section 3,
I consider the implications of Charles Beitz’s ‘cosmopolitan’ theory of
justice for the situation of environmental refugees: I argue that Beitz’s
approach is much better able to respond to the plight of potential and
actual environmental refugees. However, I suggest that it pays insufficient
attention to the role of the physical environment in many people’s lives. In
section 4, I offer a brief conclusion.

E NVIRONMENTAL R EFUGEES AND C LIMATE C HANGE

The standard definition of ‘environmental refugees’ comes from El-

Hinnawi’s United Nations Environment Programme report, Environmental
Refugees:
Environmental refugees are defined as those people who have been forced to leave their
traditional habitat, temporarily or permanently, because of a marked environmental disrup-
tion (natural and/or triggered by people) that jeopardized their existence and/or seriously
affected the quality of their life. By ‘environmental disruption’ in this definition is meant
any physical, chemical and/or biological changes in the ecosystem (or the resource base)
that render it, temporarily or permanently, unsuitable to support human life.7

The idea of ‘environmental refugees’ has been criticised as ‘unhelpful and

unsound intellectually, and unnecessary in practical terms’.8 The critics’
main complaints are that: (1) the label ‘environmental’ oversimplifies the
causes of forced migration; (2) there is no evidence of very large numbers
7 E. El-Hinnawi, Environmental Refugees (Nairobi: United Nations Environment
Programme, 1985), 4. El-Hinnawi’s definition does not distinguish between people
displaced beyond the borders of their own state and those displaced within state borders
(unlike many definitions of ‘refugees’, including the Geneva Convention). For the purposes
of this paper, I concentrate on those displaced beyond the borders of their own state.
8 R. Black, Environmental Refugees: Myth or Reality? (2001), available at http://
www.unhcr.ch/refworld/pubs/pubon.htm.
138 DEREK R. BELL

of people being displaced by environmental disruptions (particularly deser-

tification and rising sea levels); (3) it is a strategic mistake to use the label
‘environmental refugees’ because it may ‘encourage receiving states to
treat [refugees] in the same way as “economic migrants” to reduce their
responsibility to protect and assist’.9
In my opinion, none of these criticisms provides sufficient reason for
not using the concept as it is used in this paper. First, the label ‘environ-
mental’ identifies a particular ‘mechanism’ of displacement and broadens
the category of ‘refugees’. It does not exclude closer investigation of the
causes of population-displacing environmental disruptions. Second, the
evidence is contested.10 Moreover, if the number of people being displaced
by environmental disruptions may increase in the future, now is the
time to consider our responsibilities to potential environmental refugees.
Third, the idea that using the term ‘environmental refugees’ somehow
makes it more likely that all refugees will be regarded as ‘economic
migrants’ is unconvincing. More importantly, it reflects scepticism about
the severity of the situation of people displaced by environmental disrup-
tions that needs to be disputed rather than accepted. The critics of the
notion of ‘environmental refugees’ may be too concerned to adhere to the
Geneva Convention conception of refugees (which requires that refugees
be victims of ‘persecution’) rather than more recent formulations, such as
the Organization of African Unity’s (OAU) Convention on Refugees.11
An account of justice toward ‘environmental refugees’ should address
two basic questions. What are our responsibilities to actual environmental
refugees (i.e., people who have been displaced by an environmental disrup-
tion)? What are our responsibilities to potential environmental refugees
(i.e., people who might be displaced by an environmental disruption)?
Environmental disruptions can have many causes; therefore, there are
many reasons why people become environmental refugees. I propose to
9 On (1) see J.A. McGregor, ‘Refugees and the Environment’ in eds R. Black and V.
Robinson, Geography and Refugees: Patterns and Processes of Change (London: Belhaven
Press, 1993), 159–70, pp. 159–60. On (2) see Black, op. cit., 5–9 and R. Black, Refugees,
Environment and Development (New York: Addison Wesley Longman, 1998), 26–31. On
(3) see McGregor, op. cit., 162.
10 See, for example, Myers, op. cit.
11 For the Geneva Convention definition see UN Convention Relating to the Status of
Refugees at http://www.unhcr.ch/html/menu3/b/o_c_ref.htm (1951). For the OAU Conven-
tion see OAU (1969) cited in El-Hinnawi, op. cit., 3. For critical discussion of the Geneva
Convention definition see, for example, ed. B.S. Chimni, International Refugee Law: A
Reader (London: Sage, 2000), 1–61; J.C. Hathaway, The Law of Refugee Status (Toronto:
Butterworths, 1991) and eds F. Nicholson and P. Twomey, Refugee Rights and Realities:
Evolving International Concepts and Regimes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1999).
 ENVIRONMENTAL REFUGEES: WHAT RIGHTS? WHICH DUTIES? 139

focus on one cause of environmental disruptions, namely, global climate

change. The chosen case is not intended to be representative of all causes
of environmental disruptions. However, climate change may already be
creating environmental refugees and there is wide agreement that it is
likely to become the most significant cause of environmental disruptions
and consequent population displacement within the next fifty years (or
fewer).12 If a theory of international justice cannot adequately address
the case of climate change, it cannot adequately address the problem of
environmental refugees.
The prevailing scientific wisdom is that climate change is the result of
greenhouse gas emissions.13 Historically, developed countries have been
almost entirely responsible for those emissions and past and present gener-
ations have benefited economically from the technology that produced
them. However, it is not the developed countries that are likely to suffer
the worst consequences of climate change. Instead, the costs will be borne
by those living on marginal land likely to suffer desertification, islands
and low-lying areas likely to suffer flooding and, more generally, any poor
areas lacking the economic capacity and infrastructure to cope with any
increase in extreme weather events. Of course, developed countries may
suffer some adverse effects – but they are the best placed to respond to
climate change and its consequences.
The role of developed nations in creating environmental burdens for
less developed nations might suggest an historic injustice that needs to
be rectified. On this approach, duties to environmental refugees would be
duties of corrective or rectificatory justice. However, the rights of potential
and actual environmental refugees – and the duties of others to them –
need not depend on an argument from historic injustice. If climate change
(whatever its cause) has an impact on the distribution of benefits and
burdens among persons or societies, potential and actual environmental
refugees may have a claim on those who are better placed to deal with its
(actual or potential) effects.14 Here I shall consider the potential of two

12 For discussion of the displacement effects of climate change see, for example, J.
McCarthy, Climate Change 2001: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2001), 14, 43–4; Myers, op. cit., 1; and B. Muller, The Great
Divide (Oxford: Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, 2002), 3–4.
13 See, for example, J. Griffin, ‘Introduction: The Many Dimensions of the Climate
Change Issue’ in ed. J. Griffin, Global Climate Change: The Science, Economics and
Politics (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2003), 1–24, pp. 4–7.
14 Typically, talk of ‘climate change’ refers to change ‘attributed directly or indirectly
to human activity’ – see J. Miguez, ‘Equity, Responsibility and Climate Change’ in eds
L. Pinguelli-Rosa and M. Munasinghe, Ethics, Equity and International Negotiations on
Climate Change (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2002), 7–35, p. 7). The important issue for
140 DEREK R. BELL

liberal theories of justice to address the situation of potential and actual

environmental refugees without relying on an argument from historic
injustice.15

T HE S OCIETY OF P EOPLES A PPROACH

The first theory of international justice that I want to consider is the

‘society of peoples’ approach set out by John Rawls in The Law of
Peoples. Rawls does not explicitly address environmental issues in The
Law of Peoples. Indeed, it has been suggested that this is one important
lacuna in his theory.16 The aim of this section is to consider how
Rawls’s theory of international justice might nevertheless be worked
out to address population-displacing environmental disruptions caused by
climate change.17
Rawls’s normative theory of international relations is fundamentally
a conception of a just foreign policy for a liberal society. His aim is to
the discussion that follows is not which (or even whether) humans have caused climate
change but rather how humans can respond to it. However, any argument for mitigation
(as opposed to adaptation) obviously depends on the assumption that human activity can
have an effect (and almost certainly has had an effect) on the global climate. I argue for
mitigation – and assume that greenhouse gases are a major cause of climate change – in
section 3 below.
15 There are good intuitive reasons for thinking that an argument from historic injustice
might be a stronger argument – if developed nations have benefited from actions that have
produced environmental burdens for others, ‘we’ might expect to have duties of corrective
justice to those harmed by ‘our’ actions. However, arguments from historic injustice neces-
sarily depend on a prior conception of justice. Moreover, there are difficult issues about
collective (including intergenerational) responsibility as well as problems about identifying
who is responsible for the “accumulative harms” – i.e., harms that result from the cumu-
lative effect of many actions that would not be harmful on their own – associated with
climate change – see J. Feinberg, Harm to Others: The Moral Limits of the Criminal Law
Vol. 1 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984), 225. I do not want to suggest that these
problems are insurmountable but merely that the historic injustice argument – despite its
intuitive appeal – is not straightforward.
16 See S. Caney, ‘Survey Article: Cosmopolitanism and the Law of Peoples’, The
Journal of Political Philosophy 10 (2002), 95–123, p. 119.
17 There have been some discussions of the implications of Rawls’s domestic theory
of justice for environmental issues. See, for example, B. Singer, ‘An Extension of Rawls’
Theory of Justice to Environmental Ethics’, Environmental Ethics 10 (1988), 217–31; P.
Wenz, Environmental Justice (Albany: SUNY Press, 1988); D. Thero, ‘Rawls and Environ-
mental Ethics: A Critical Examination of the Literature’, Environmental Ethics 17 (1995),
93–106; A. Dobson, Justice and the Environment (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998)
and D. R. Bell, ‘Environmental Justice and Rawls’s Difference Principle’, Environmental
Ethics (forthcoming). However, none of these accounts have considered the distinctive
features of his theory of international justice.
 ENVIRONMENTAL REFUGEES: WHAT RIGHTS? WHICH DUTIES? 141

develop ‘within political liberalism . . . an extension of a liberal conception

of justice for a domestic regime . . . [to] work out the ideals and principles
of the foreign policy of a reasonably just liberal people’.18 For Rawls, the
principle of reciprocity is central to political liberalism.19 In an interna-
tional setting, reciprocity requires that a liberal society should only adopt
a foreign policy that respects (or is founded on) principles of international
justice that can be accepted by all ‘reasonable (or ‘decent’) and rational’
societies (or ‘peoples’), ‘as free and equal peoples’.20 The fundamental
theoretical issue is how to define the ‘reasonable and rational’.
Rawls makes it clear that ‘the criteria for [reasonableness and ration-
ality] . . . are not deduced, but enumerated and characterized’.21 In
the international context, a ‘rational’ people pursues their ‘fundamental
interests’, namely, their self-respect or status as an independent and equal
member of the ‘Society of Peoples’ and the conditions for the continued
realisation of their own conception of domestic justice.22 A ‘reasonable’
people not only insists ‘on receiving from other peoples a proper respect
and recognition of their equality’ but is also ‘fully prepared to grant the
very same proper respect and recognition to other peoples as equals’.23
In so doing, a ‘reasonable’ people accepts constraints on their ‘rational’
pursuit of their fundamental interests.24
Rawls claims that ‘reasonable and rational’ peoples would agree to
eight principles of international justice as a basis for foreign policy.25
This is not the place to consider the general plausibility of the content of
these principles or their derivation.26 Instead, we need consider only those

18 J. Rawls, The Law of Peoples (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999),
9–10; original emphasis.
19 Ibid., 14, 35. See also J. Rawls, Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1993), 16–7; and J. Rawls, Justice as Fairness: A Restatement (Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, 2001), 6.
20 Rawls, The Law of Peoples, op. cit., 34; original emphasis. In the remainder of this
paper, I use ‘reasonable’ to cover ‘reasonable or decent’. In the context of this paper, the
distinction between ‘reasonable liberal peoples’ and ‘decent peoples’ is not important. For
the idea of ‘decent peoples’ see ibid., 4, 64–7.
21 Ibid., 87.
22 Ibid., 34. See also ibid., 47–8, 71.
23 Ibid., 35.
24 See ibid., 29.
25 Ibid., 37.
26 For excellent critical discussions see C. Beitz, ‘Rawls’s Law of Peoples’, Ethics 110
(2000), 669–96; Caney, op. cit.; A. Kuper, ‘Rawlsian Global Justice: Beyond The Law of
Peoples to a Cosmopolitan Law of Persons’, Political Theory 28 (2000), 640–74; and T.
Pogge, ‘Critical Study: Rawls on International Justice’, The Philosophical Quarterly 51
(2001), 246–53.
142 DEREK R. BELL

features of Rawls’s theory that shed light on how he might view the plight
of potential and actual environmental refugees.
A striking feature of Rawls’s account is the emphasis that he places on
borders or ‘boundaries’.27 A people have their own territory and their own
social and political institutions.28 They are responsible ‘for their territory
and its environmental integrity, as well as for the size of their population’.29
For Rawls, the arbitrariness of a society’s boundaries ‘from a historical
point of view’ is irrelevant for three reasons.30 First, the idea of a world
state is untenable: therefore ‘there must be boundaries of some kind’.31
Second, a society’s wealth does not depend on its natural resources but
rather on ‘its members’ political and civic virtues’, including their ‘indus-
triousness and cooperative talents’.32 There is ‘no society anywhere in
the world – except for marginal cases [such as “Arctic Eskimos”] – with
resources so scarce’ that with good government it could not achieve the
level of wealth necessary to maintain just institutions.33 The ‘arbitrariness
of the distribution of natural resources’ associated with arbitrary borders
‘causes no difficulty’ because any inequalities of wealth among peoples
are the result of their own choices.34 Third, ‘unless a definite agent is given
responsibility for maintaining an asset and bears the loss for not doing so,
that asset tends to deteriorate’.35 Someone must be deemed responsible
for the earth’s natural resources and the most plausible division of respon-
sibility (given Rawls’s two earlier points) makes peoples responsible for
their ‘territory and its capacity to support them in perpetuity’.36
Rawls’s commitment to (slightly limited)37 national sovereignty over
a territory and its natural resources has important implications for how
we should respond to the kinds of environmental problem that can cause
population displacement. Consider the case of global climate change.
Rawls’s conception of international justice seems particularly ill-suited to
this kind of situation for two reasons. First, the global climate and the
composition of the upper atmosphere that determines it are not part of
the ‘territory’ of any nation. They are part of the ‘global commons’, yet
27 Rawls, The Law of Peoples, op. cit., 38.
28 See ibid., 23–4, 38.
29 Ibid., 38–9. See also ibid., 8.
30 Ibid., 38.
31 Ibid., 39; original emphasis. See also ibid., 36.
32 Ibid., 117 and 108.
33 Ibid., 108. The reference to Arctic Eskimos is from ibid., 108, n. 34.
34 Ibid., 117. See also ibid., 39.
35 Ibid., 39.
36 Ibid., original emphasis. See also ibid., 8.
37 The limits are set by the eight principles of the law of peoples.
 ENVIRONMENTAL REFUGEES: WHAT RIGHTS? WHICH DUTIES? 143

they have a profound effect on the environmental integrity of all nations.

Rawls’s theory simply ignores the existence of the ‘global commons’ and
the location of all national territories within it. Moreover, Rawls’s defence
of national sovereignty over natural resources is premised, as we have
seen, on the claim that ‘unless a definite agent is given responsibility for
maintaining an asset and bears the loss for not doing so, that asset tends
to deteriorate’. If he is correct, the ‘tragedy of the global commons’ seems
inevitable in his society of peoples because no one can have responsibility
for the global commons. In short, Rawls ignores a problem that is insoluble
in his world order.
However, Rawls’s theory might not be as ill-equipped to deal with this
kind of problem as it initially appears. The eighth principle of the law of
peoples recognises a duty to assist ‘burdened societies’:

Peoples have a duty to assist other peoples living under unfavorable conditions that prevent
their having a just or decent political and social regime.38

Rawls defines a burdened society as one that lacks ‘the human capital and
know-how, and, often, the material and technological resources’ needed to
secure and maintain the conditions necessary for just institutions.39 The
aim of the duty of assistance is to enable burdened societies to achieve
just institutions and thereby become members of the society of (just)
peoples. For Rawls, the duty of assistance involves more than ‘merely
dispensing funds’.40 It is the political and social culture of a people that
determines ‘how a country fares’: ‘assistance’ therefore must also include
an international ‘emphasis on human rights’ aimed at changing ‘ineffective
regimes’.41 It is not clear whether Rawls’s account of burdened societies
extends as far as societies threatened by (or suffering from) the potentially
devastating effects of climate change. However, even if we were to include
them among burdened societies, Rawls’s theory would still offer only
limited support to environmentally burdened peoples. It does not require
equality of wealth among members of the society of peoples. Instead, it
may allow large inequalities of wealth among (just) peoples. Therefore the
support that one society must offer to another society to deal with their
environmental problems may be very limited. Moreover, Rawls’s duty of
assistance is intended to help the citizens of burdened societies to make
best use of their own territory. It does not require that developed nations
38 Ibid., 37.
39 Ibid., 106.
40 Ibid., 108.
41 Ibid., 117 and 109. Rawls cites Sen’s work on the role of human rights and women’s
rights in preventing famines (ibid., 109–10).
144 DEREK R. BELL

accommodate displaced persons.42 Yet resettlement may be the only option

for the inhabitants of lowland areas already destined to be flooded as a
result of irreversible climate changes. It is hardly likely that Rawls would
think that such people should not be resettled. The problem is to find a
place in his theoretical framework to accommodate them.
The only option seems to be the kind of ad hoc solution that Rawls
suggests when he recognises that there may be ‘marginal cases’ where a
society’s resources are ‘so scarce’ that it could not maintain just institu-
tions.43 His example of such a society is ‘Arctic Eskimos’ and he suggests
that they are ‘rare enough, and need not affect our general approach’.44
There may be limits to the kinds of cases that a theory of justice can
accommodate so that there are times when we do have to rely on ad hoc
solutions. However, the effects of global climate change are likely to be
so far-reaching that the ‘marginal cases’ where significant proportions of a
people’s territory are submerged under rising seas (or made uninhabitable
or unproductive in other ways by global warming) cannot be said to be
‘rare enough’ not to ‘affect our general approach’. A plausible conception
of international justice for the twenty-first century and beyond must have
the capacity to address these issues without resorting to ad hoc solutions.
One final possibility that a Rawlsian approach might pursue is the idea
of international agreements designed to mitigate the effects of climate
change. The second and third principles of the law of peoples allow for
international agreements and require their observance:
2. Peoples are to observe treaties and undertakings
3. Peoples are equal and are parties to the agreements that bind them.45

However, there are two reasons to doubt that peoples in a Rawlsian inter-
national order would agree to a treaty that would offer genuine protection
to potential or actual victims of climate change. First, we have already seen
that a Rawlsian international political system is likely to face ‘tragedy of
the commons’ problems. It may be collectively rational for everyone to
sign an international agreement to mitigate the effects of climate change
42 Members of the society of peoples might agree to help each other in emergency
conditions, such as natural disasters, including offering temporary accommodation for
disaster victims. However, agreeing to permanently accommodate victims of global climate
change would seem to be more demanding. More generally, accommodating people from
burdened societies would be a ‘long-term’ commitment, given that such societies are so
far from achieving and maintaining the just institutions necessary to support their people
(ibid., 106). If a people must rely on its own territory in perpetuity, it must have ‘at least a
qualified right to limit immigration’ (ibid., 39, n. 48).
43 Ibid., 108, n. 34 and 108.
44 Ibid., 108, n. 34.
45 Ibid., 37.
 ENVIRONMENTAL REFUGEES: WHAT RIGHTS? WHICH DUTIES? 145

but it is individually rational for each (or, at least, most) peoples to continue
with a “business as usual” approach rather than paying the economic cost
of reducing their greenhouse gas emissions.46 Moreover, the benefits and
burdens of climate change and climate change mitigation, adaptation or
compensation are not equally shared among peoples. Developed peoples
must pay the economic costs of mitigation, adaptation or compensation
while it is less developed peoples that suffer the most serious consequences
of inaction (because of their climate and location and – more importantly
– their lack of infrastructure and resources to adapt to climate change).47
The different incentive structures facing the parties to any potential agree-
ment, combined with the economic inequalities between them, are likely to
ensure that any international agreement does more to protect the rich than
it does to protect potential environmental refugees. In short, the potential
signatories of a climate change treaty are not equally situated because they
are not economically or environmentally equal. Therefore any agreement
they reach will reflect these differences.48 The eighth principle – if it
applies to environmentally burdened peoples – might place some limits
on the kind of treaty that could legitimately be negotiated by members of
the society of peoples. Even so, on Rawls’s theory, it is only burdened
societies that should be protected from ‘exploitation’, however; relatively
poor members of the society of peoples must make their own way in the
global marketplace and in international treaty negotiations.
In summary, we have seen that Rawls’s conception of international
justice may not be wholly silent on the environmental issues that we are
46 On the difficulty of designing a successful climate change treaty given the incentive
structures of individual states, see Barrett’s discussion of the shortcomings of the Kyoto
Protocol and some possible alternative approaches in S. Barrett, Environment and State-
craft (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 373–98.
47 A point of considerable contention in the Kyoto negotiations has been the possibility
of imposing emissions limits on less developed (non-Annex I) countries (some of whom
will become major polluters in the near future). However, it is widely agreed that even if the
economic development of less developed nations should be managed to control their emis-
sions, a substantial portion of the costs of ‘clean development’ should be met by developed
nations. See, for example, T. Banuri and E. Spanger-Siegfried, ‘Equity and the Clean
Development Mechanism: equity, additionality, supplementarity’ in eds L. Pinguelli-Rosa
and M. Munasinghe, op. cit., 102–36, p. 103.
48 It might be suggested that Rawls could require ‘fair standards of treaty negotiation’
just as he suggests that peoples should agree to ‘fair standards of trade’ including ‘fair
background conditions’: but both ideas are problematic in the context of Rawls’s theory
(Rawls, The Law of Peoples, op. cit., 43 and 42, n. 52). The analogy with the domestic
context would suggest that ‘fair background conditions’ would require radical redistribu-
tion of wealth among societies to produce something closer to Beitz’s ‘global difference
principle’, which Rawls rejects (ibid., 116–9). If we think of treaty negotiation as analogous
to trade, the same problem of ‘fair background conditions’ arises.
146 DEREK R. BELL

considering. However, it does not provide a plausible starting-point for

the construction of a theory of international environmental justice that
can adequately address the plight of potential and actual environmental
refugees.

T HE C OSMOPOLITAN A PPROACH

The second theory of international justice that I want to consider is

the ‘cosmopolitan’ approach set out by Charles Beitz in his Political
Theory and International Relations49 Beitz starts from Rawls’s earlier
short consideration of international justice in A Theory of Justice and
through a critical discussion of Rawls’s theory develops a much more
demanding conception of international justice.50 One of the features of
Beitz’s account is that he pays more attention than Rawls to natural
resource issues: therefore we might reasonably expect his theory to have
more to say about environmental problems. The aim of this section is to
consider how his conception of international justice can be worked out to
address the problem of population displacement caused by climate change.
Beitz rejects two key features of Rawls’s position. First, he disputes
Rawls’s claim that a society’s wealth does not depend on its natural
resources. Instead, he identifies ‘two elements that contribute to the
material advancement of societies’, namely, ‘human cooperative activity’
and the ‘natural resources . . . distributed . . . over the earth’s surface’.51
For Beitz, the distribution of natural resources among peoples matters
because it is (or, at least, may be)52 a significant factor in the determi-
nation of ‘how a country fares’.53 Therefore, the radical natural resource
inequalities among nations that Rawls considers morally irrelevant are of
the utmost importance for a theory of international justice. The natural
distribution of resources among nations is arbitrary in a sense that is
similar to Rawls’s claim that natural talents are ‘arbitrary’ in the context
of a domestic theory of justice.54 More precisely, nations are not morally
entitled to the resources in their territory or to the wealth created by the
use of those resources.
49 Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999.
50 For Rawls’s earlier position, see J. Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1972), 378–9.
51 C. Beitz, op. cit., 137.
52 See his ‘Rawls’s Law of Peoples’, op. cit., 690 and Political Theory and International
Relations, op. cit., 206.
53 Rawls, The Law of Peoples, op. cit., 117.
54 Beitz, Political Theory and International Relations, op. cit., 141.
 ENVIRONMENTAL REFUGEES: WHAT RIGHTS? WHICH DUTIES? 147

For Beitz, the ‘underlying principle’ for the distribution of natural

resources is not that each people should keep its own resources but rather
that
each person has an equal prima facie claim to a share of the total available resources, but
departures from this initial standard could be justified . . . if the resulting inequalities were
to the greatest benefit of those least advantaged by the inequality.55

In essence, Beitz is proposing an international analogue of Rawls’s differ-

ence principle but applied only to natural resources rather than to income
and wealth (which are products of both social cooperation and natural
resources). He calls this principle the ‘resource redistribution principle’
(RRP).56 Second, Beitz argues that Rawls’s conception of nations as
independent and self-sufficient entities is incorrect. He points out that
International interdependence is reflected in the volume of transactions that flow across
national boundaries – for example, communications, travel, trade, aid, and foreign
investment.57

If nations are interdependent, there appears to be no reason to ‘view

national boundaries as having fundamental significance’ or as determining
the ‘scope’ of principles of justice.58 Instead, we should seek global prin-
ciples of distributive justice that can be accepted by all ‘reasonable and
rational’ persons.59 Beitz suggests that if Rawls is correct that ‘social and
economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are . . . to the greatest
benefit of the least advantaged’ in a domestic context, the same principle
of distribution should be chosen by ‘reasonable and rational’ persons at
the global level.60 This principle – a ‘global difference principle’ (GDP)
– is more demanding than the resource redistribution principle because it
applies to income and wealth (as products of both global social cooperation
and natural resources) rather than just to natural resources.61
The differences between Beitz’s cosmopolitanism and Rawls’s ‘society
of peoples’ approach are significant in the context of our discussion of
environmental disruptions and population displacement. The RRP makes
it impossible to ignore the effects of environmental degradation. If a
nation (or a person) does not have its fair share of natural resources, the
RRP requires redistribution from the resource-rich to the resource-poor. A
55 Ibid., 141.
56 Ibid.
57 Ibid., 144.
58 Ibid., 151.
59 See ibid., 203.
60 Ibid., 151 quoting Rawls.
61 Ibid., 152.
148 DEREK R. BELL

victim of environmental degradation for which she is not responsible will

be entitled to resource transfers if she is left with less than her fair share
of the total available natural resources (after the value of her lost resources
has been subtracted from the global resource sum).62 Victims of natural
environmental disasters, transboundary pollution and the effects of global
climate change might all benefit from the RRP.63
The GDP also has interesting implications. For Beitz, respecting people
as ‘free and equal moral persons’ involves reconstructing the ‘basic struc-
ture’ of international (or global) society – its many and varied political,
economic and social institutions – to meet the global difference principle,
thereby securing the greatest advantage of the globally least well off.64 In
a just world, the victims of climate change would be protected by global
institutions that guaranteed them a fair share of global wealth. In an unre-
constructed and unjust world, the GDP implies that the less well off should
not be held responsible for all of their decisions. On this account, it is not
just absolutely poor (or burdened) societies that should not be held respon-
sible for signing up to international treaties or trade agreements that do
not protect them from (or even make them more vulnerable to) the effects
of climate change. Citizens of relatively poor (or less well off) societies,
relatively powerless smaller societies and relatively poor individuals in
almost any society may all find that they lack the necessary economic
means to underwrite their status as ‘free and equal moral persons’ in a
globalised marketplace. In short, the GDP implies that global inequalities
of wealth and power that are beyond those allowed by the global difference
principle should not be allowed to influence the outcomes of treaty or trade
negotiations.
So far, I have suggested that Beitz’s cosmopolitan theory of inter-
national justice would offer substantial rights to potential and actual
environmental refugees displaced by the effects of global climate change.
The RRP would require the redistribution of natural resources so that their
distribution is to the advantage of the least well off after the effects of any
environmental disruption caused by climate change are taken into account.
The GDP would require that the global basic structure should be designed
to ensure that any inequalities in wealth are to the advantage of the least
well off, thereby protecting anyone displaced by the effects of climate

62 At least, in principle – see Beitz, ‘Rawls’s Law of Peoples’, op. cit., 692 for some
potential qualifications based on pragmatic or instrumental considerations.
63 Beitz explicitly mentions climate and location as ‘natural resources’ – see Political
Theory and International Relations, op. cit., 206.
64 Ibid., 203. The idea of the ‘basic structure’ of society comes originally from Rawls:
see his Political Liberalism, op. cit., 258.
 ENVIRONMENTAL REFUGEES: WHAT RIGHTS? WHICH DUTIES? 149

change from poverty and destitution. So protection from environmental

disruptions caused by climate change seems to be an essential requirement
of a just world order. The problem arises when we look more closely at the
character of that protection, however.
Consider the situation of small island nations. Beitz’s cosmopolitan
theory of justice requires that if climate change leads to rises in sea level
and the islands are lost, the islanders should receive natural resource trans-
fers65 (by RRP) and may also be entitled to wealth transfers (and other
primary goods) depending upon their particular situation in the context
of a global basic structure designed to satisfy the difference principle (by
GDP). In terms of justice, the islanders’ claims are fully satisfied by such
transfers.66 Indeed, Beitz’s cosmopolitan theory of justice provides no
obvious reason for countries that emit huge quantities of greenhouse gases
to cut their emissions as long as they are prepared to make appropriate
transfers (including land or citizenship rights) to the victims of climate
change.67 The recognition that the outcome of their actions will be the
destruction of a nation’s territory is irrelevant. But isn’t the refusal to cut
greenhouse gas emissions to protect the integrity of the islanders’ territory
an injustice?
One way of defending this claim is to consider the analogy that Beitz
draws between natural talents and natural resources.68 He recognises that
Rawls’s contention that talents are arbitrary from a moral point of view
might be challenged on two grounds. First, talents are naturally attached
to persons. Second, talents are (or, at least, can be) constitutive of personal
identity. He suggests that neither is true of natural resources. Natural
resources are not naturally attached to particular persons – we acquire
them. Similarly, natural resources are not constitutive of personal identity:

It would be inappropriate to take the sort of pride in the diamond deposits in one’s back
yard that one takes in the ability to play the Appassionata. This is because natural resources

65 We might reasonably assume that this would include entitlement to land.

66 I assume that the same would be true of the “victims” of development projects (e.g.,
the building of dams) who received their natural resource and wealth entitlements under
RRP and GDP.
67 In fact, Beitz’s approach does not generate either a duty to mitigate the effects of
climate change or a duty to fund adaptation to the effects of climate change. It requires
only compensation. Of course, there may be a duty of intergenerational justice to cut
greenhouse gas emissions, but such a duty would have to be owed by one global generation
to subsequent global generations. It would not offer any protection for a people ‘to live
where our ancestors have lived for thousands of years’ (Paani Laupepa quoted in Brown,
op. cit.). Instead, it could offer future generations only a fair share of natural resources and
wealth.
68 See Beitz, Political Theory and International Relations, op. cit., 137–40.
150 DEREK R. BELL

come into the development of personality (when they come in at all) in a more casual way
than do talents.69

Beitz’s example – diamond deposits – may make his position seem plaus-
ible. It is true that diamonds ‘are not there, as parts of the self, to
begin with. They must first be appropriated’ before they can be ‘worked
on, shaped, and benefited from’ in ‘the development of personality’.70
However, it is much less clear that the same is true of the islanders’
territory.
The physical environment in which a person lives may well be (partly)
constitutive of their identity.71 In the modern world, many of us may not
have a place that we think of as ‘home’ or we may be able to make many
places our ‘home’ for periods of our lives.72 However, the people most
likely to be displaced by climate change may also be most likely to have a
closer attachment to the land that is their ‘home’ and the community that
shares that ‘home’.73 If we conceive of natural resources (and wealth) as
substitutable, we may think that it is fair to make decisions that will leave
the potential victims of climate change ‘homeless’; but if we recognise that
social and natural environments are more than mere resources, we cannot
so readily conceive of such decisions as just. Beitz’s cosmopolitan theory
of justice succumbs to the liberal temptation to conceive of the environ-
ment as a resource; and yet liberal neutrality demands that the environment
should not be conceptualised in any pre-determined way.74
In summary, I have suggested that Beitz’s cosmopolitan approach has
significant advantages over Rawls’s society of peoples approach in the

69 Ibid., 139.
70 Ibid., 140 and 139.
71 This claim might be interpreted in different ways. I intend to claim that a person’s
identity may be formed in the context of and in response to their physical environment.
The meaning of their life – and what Matthew Humphrey calls their ‘sense of ontological
security in the face of the uncertainties of life in human society’ – may depend on the
preservation of that context. See M. Humphrey, Preservation versus the People? Nature,
Humanity, and Political Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 187.
72 On the idea of attachment to ‘home’ in the modern world see M. Dummett, On
Immigration and Refugees (London: Routledge, 2001), 18–9.
73 On the idea of the ‘land as an inalienable home for those who inhabit it and not as an
object to be bought and sold for economic gain’ see M. Smith, An Ethics of Place: Radical
Ecology, Postmodernity and Social Theory (Albany: SUNY Press, 2001), 159. Islanders
seem especially likely to have this kind of attachment to their ‘home’.
74 On this point, I disagree with those who blame liberalism – understood as a philosoph-
ical position – for reducing nature to mere resources. Liberals may be guilty but liberalism
properly understood is not.
 ENVIRONMENTAL REFUGEES: WHAT RIGHTS? WHICH DUTIES? 151

context of our discussion of environmental refugees.75 First, it has the

conceptual space to recognise environmental issues ignored or rendered
insoluble within Rawls’s ideal theory. Second, it avoids marginalising the
problems that it does recognise: it accepts the critical importance of natural
resources and global institutions, thereby, providing grounds for taking
seriously environmental degradation and its effects on the natural resources
and wealth of individuals. However, Beitz’s theory does not offer a fully
adequate account of the injustice of environmental disruptions caused by
global climate change because it accepts an inadequate conception of the
role of nature in human life.76

C ONCLUSION

If either of the theories of international justice we have considered were to

be realised in the world the number of persons displaced by environmental
disruptions would be significantly decreased. However, only the cosmo-
politan approach provides potential and actual environmental refugees
with significant rights to natural resource and wealth transfers from those
who are better off. Our comparison of the two leading theories of inter-
national justice suggests that an adequate treatment of the plight of
environmental refugees is likely to be fundamentally cosmopolitan.
The weakness in Beitz’s cosmopolitanism, however, is that it ignores
the importance of place in people’s lives. The physical environment is
not simply a natural resource to be ‘appropriated . . . worked on, shaped,
75 One other possible advantage that I have not discussed is that Beitz’s cosmopolitan
approach does not require a naïve view of international politics in which the only
significant actors are peoples (or states). In principle, Beitz’s ‘moral cosmopolitanism’
is compatible with any number of different institutional arrangements (see C. Beitz, ‘Inter-
national Liberalism and Distributive Justice: A Survey of Recent Thought’, World Politics
51 (1999), 269–96, pp. 286–7). The complexity of both climate change and the modern
economic and social world suggests that a fully worked out theory of duties to potential
and actual environmental refugees may need to pay very serious attention to the question of
what kinds of entity should be duty-bearers. For example, should states remain the primary
duty-bearers? What kind of role should supra-national institutions play in a just world
order? Who should be responsible if the primary duty-bearers cannot meet the demands
of justice? What might be the proper role of multinational corporations, non-governmental
organisations and individuals? Beitz’s approach seems compatible with an exploration of
these issues whereas Rawls’s approach requires an exclusive focus on peoples or states as
the only duty-bearers in the international arena.
76 In fact, the problem is more general: Beitz’s theory is unable to recognise the injustice
of any human-induced environmental disruption that causes displacement but offers a fair
share of natural resources and wealth to the displaced.
152 DEREK R. BELL

and benefited from’.77 It can also be a person’s home; a fundamental

and constitutive part of their identity. For many people, their environment
provides the frame of reference in which the development of their person-
ality takes place. A theory of justice should not ignore the fact that each of
us is “a particular person in a particular place”. Of course, it is also true that
we have the ability to distance ourselves – physically and psychologically
– from our home but that does not mean that it is morally legitimate for
others to remove our option of staying at home. For many people, home is
not just one place among others; it is not substitutable without significant
psychological cost.
A plausible cosmopolitan theory of justice must recognise that it is
unjust to treat people as if they were merely citizens of an undifferentiated
world. Therefore, it cannot treat the disruption, degradation or destruction
of particular environments or homes as nothing more than the loss of some
substitutable natural resources. Instead, the pursuit of development goals
must be constrained by a concern for the protection of people’s homes.
There may be limits to how much justice requires us to pay to protect
people’s homes but we should always take into account the claims of those
who may be displaced. At the very least, their substantive rights to have
their homes protected should be supported by procedural rights to effective
participation in (global and national) decisions that may significantly
affect the conditions of their homes.78 Potential and actual environmental
refugees should be entitled not only to equal rights to natural resources
and wealth as “citizens of the world” but also as “particular persons in a
particular place” they should be entitled to some control over what happens
to their homes.

School of Geography, Politics and Sociology

University of Newcastle
40–42 Great North Road
Newcastle upon Tyne
NE1 7RU
UK
E-mail: derek.bell@ncl.ac.uk

77 Beitz, Political Theory and International Relations, op. cit., 140.

78 On the important role of global democracy in dealing with climate change more
generally see B. Holden, Democracy and Global Warming (London: Continuum, 2002).