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    Climate mobilities, rights and justice: Complexities and particularities
    (Lausanne : Frontiers Media, 2022) Farbotko, Carol; Thornton, Fanny; Mayrhofer, Monika; Hermann, Elfriede
    Climate mobility revolves around issues of justice and human rights, whether this be concerning its causes, expression or handling. This paper examines the justice-rights nexus as it relates to climate mobility, highlighting how the two spheres converge and diverge. It works with four case studies exploring the complexity of rights and justice in the climate mobility context. Our case studies are diverse, in terms of the mobility types concerned and the rights and justice-based issues involved. We show that conceptualizing or achieving just or righteous outcomes is neither certain nor a uniform pursuit when it comes to climate mobility. Rather, there are many divergences–by those who claim rights or justice, and those asked to respond. We present a complex and contested space, highlight the importance of approaching justice and rights matters contextually, and with special attention to particularities when climate mobility is at issue.
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    The future is now: Climate displacement and human rights obligations—a note on recent developments in the UN Human Rights Committee
    (Lausanne : Frontiers Media, 2022) Thornton, Fanny
    Although climate litigation—or the pursuit of legal resolve of matters stemming from anthropogenic climate change—has been growing around the world, climate mobility is seldom at the heart of relevant case law. It is human rights law bodies, in particular, which have nevertheless begun to progress legal developments in the sphere of climate mobility. This note looks at a 2022 determination by the UN Human Rights Committee concerning the habitability of a small island setting—Australia's Torres Strait Islands—under climate change conditions and the legal responsibilities of nation states to abide by their international human rights obligations in implementing timely adaptation measures now which could help to ensure continued habitation.
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    Estimating global mean sea-level rise and its uncertainties by 2100 and 2300 from an expert survey
    (London : Springer Nature, 2020) Horton, Benjamin P.; Khan, Nicole S.; Cahill, Niamh; Lee, Janice S. H.; Shaw, Timothy A.; Garner, Andra J.; Kemp, Andrew C.; Engelhart, Simon E.; Rahmstorf, Stefan
    Sea-level rise projections and knowledge of their uncertainties are vital to make informed mitigation and adaptation decisions. To elicit projections from members of the scientific community regarding future global mean sea-level (GMSL) rise, we repeated a survey originally conducted five years ago. Under Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) 2.6, 106 experts projected a likely (central 66% probability) GMSL rise of 0.30–0.65 m by 2100, and 0.54–2.15 m by 2300, relative to 1986–2005. Under RCP 8.5, the same experts projected a likely GMSL rise of 0.63–1.32 m by 2100, and 1.67–5.61 m by 2300. Expert projections for 2100 are similar to those from the original survey, although the projection for 2300 has extended tails and is higher than the original survey. Experts give a likelihood of 42% (original survey) and 45% (current survey) that under the high-emissions scenario GMSL rise will exceed the upper bound (0.98 m) of the likely range estimated by the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which is considered to have an exceedance likelihood of 17%. Responses to open-ended questions suggest that the increases in upper-end estimates and uncertainties arose from recent influential studies about the impact of marine ice cliff instability on the meltwater contribution to GMSL rise from the Antarctic Ice Sheet. © 2020, The Author(s).