Climate Change, Disasters, and Internal Displacement in Asia and the Pacific: A Human Rights-Based Approach

This book examines how states in eight countries across Asia and the Pacific address internal displacement in the context of disasters and climate change.

The Asia and the Pacific region accounts for the majority of global disaster-related displacement, but the experience of the millions of individuals displaced differs according to gender, age, ethnicity, (dis)ability, caste, and so forth and is dependent on the legal, administrative, social, and economic structures and processes in place to support them. This book adopts a human rights-based approach, investigating the role of law and policy in preventing displacement, protecting people who are displaced, and engendering durable solutions across cases drawn from Thailand, Cambodia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Nepal, Bangladesh, Vanuatu, and the Solomon Islands. The specific cases in the book also reflect critically on the term ‘displacement’ and the wider normative framework within which this phenomenon is conceptualised and addressed.

The book will be of interest to students, researchers, and practitioners working at the intersection of human rights, human mobility, development, disaster risk reduction and management, and climate change adaptation.

Matthew Scott leads the People on the Move thematic area at the Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law, Lund University, Sweden.

Albert Salamanca is a Senior Research Fellow and leads the Climate Change, Disasters and Development Cluster of Stockholm Environment Institute – Asia, based in Thailand.