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Defining climate-change victims

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Abstract

This article introduces the concept of “climate-change victims” and classifies categories of threats and groups of people who would be vulnerable to and victimized by human-induced climate change. (The full, correct wording is “human-induced climate-change victims”, but we will use just “climate-change victims” in the rest of the article.) It offers a definition with three levels of climate-change victimization and differentiates “climate-change victims” from “natural-disasters victims” and from “climate-change migrants”. The article sets an agenda for a new type of victimhood and could lead to further research on possible prevention, accountability measures, environmental tribunals, and compensation mechanisms to recompense climate-change victims.

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Notes

  1. See details at http://www.leveeclaims.com/

  2. For all ECtHR case law, see HUDOC database at http://www.echr.coe.int/ECHR/

  3. Guerra and others versus Italy (1998) 26 EHRR 357.

  4. Oneryildiz versus Turkey (2005) 41 EHRR 20 at 56.

  5. Budayeva and others versus Russia, Appl. No. 15339/02, 21166/02, 20058/02, 11673/02.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. United Nations University Institute for Sustainability and Peace, Tokyo, Japan

    Vesselin Popovski

  2. Tokiwa International Victimology Institute, Tokiwa University, Building F, 1F, 1-430-1 Miwa, Mito, Ibaraki, 310-8585, Japan

    Kieran G. Mundy

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  1. Vesselin Popovski
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  2. Kieran G. Mundy
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Correspondence to Vesselin Popovski.

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Handled by Yasunobu Sato, University of Tokyo, Japan.

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Popovski, V., Mundy, K.G. Defining climate-change victims. Sustain Sci 7, 5–16 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-011-0138-0

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