Legal Protection of the Sinking Islands Refugees

Starting from the question of how international law may protect the Pacific people from climate change, this book represents the original development of the international hybrid law concept, as the basic legal study of climate change from the environmental, human rights and refugee perspectives. From 2007 to 2012, the research conducted in the Pacific demonstrated that the most affected people by the gaps of international law are the vulnerable ones whose adaptation options are limited or exhausted, and are facing displacement.

In this individual context of the Pacific islands, the book analysis the most important documents, relevant institutions and (political) actors, offering the readers, including students, the most appropriate legal analysis of the climate change impacts in the Pacific.

The 2015 Paris Agreement, by recognizing human rights and human mobility in the context of climate change, confirms the hybrid legal approach described in this book as one of the future solutions in identifying and addressing international legal gaps by placing the people affected by climate change in the center of the discussion.

Dr. Cosmin Corendea works as Associate Academic Officer/Legal Expert at the United Nations University Institute for Environment and Human Security. He is acting as focal point for legal issues associated with environmental degradation and adverse effects of climate change, such as institutional vulnerabilities, human mobility, human rights, climate equity, conducting research on conceptual and comparative frameworks of legal perceptions of environmental vulnerabilities, resilience and sustainable development impacts with distinct and positive reflection in policy making. In 2015, Dr. Corendea joined temporarily the Legal Affairs team of the United Nations Climate Change Secretariat during the making of the new Paris Agreement.

Dr. Corendea holds a S.J.D. in International Legal Studies from Golden Gate University and an LL.M. in Intercultural Human Rights from Saint Thomas University School of Law. He was recently granted a Postdoc Fellowship with the AXA Research Fund which will allow him to continue his work in the Pacific on climate change and international law.