해수면 상승과 인권: 소실영토 거주민의 인권보호와 실향 문제를 중심으로

Sea-level rise reduces the availability of freshwater due to groundwater salization and causes tsunami, flooding, and coastal erosion, among others. In addition to such impacts to the ecosystem, sea-level rise gives rise to permanent loss of territories of a state on most of the occasions. As a result, the rights of residents in affected areas — right to adequate housing, right to self-determination, as well as right to life and right to health — become threatened. At this point, there is no legally binding treaty which links negative impact of climate change with human rights. Nonetheless, relevant issues continue to be discussed at the international level including in the United Nations Climate Change Convention States, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and the United Nations General Assembly, etc. When climate change harms individuals, their country bears primary responsibility and obligation to protect their human rights. Therefore, the country is obliged to make efforts to help the people realize their economic, social and cultural rights by mobilizing all the available resources; to establish climate policies reflecting human rights criteria and principles; and to take active measures by means of international aid and cooperation to help realize human rights of displaced people even when they resettle in foreign territories. Also, as negative impact of climate change hits lower income countries harder, the rest of the world is obliged to cooperate with each other to tackle climate change and help affected countries by sharing the burden of aid, etc. With respect to legal policies on accepting the people displaced by environmental disasters, several host countries currently have a legal system granting stay status to the people who have left for a foreign country due to climate disasters. Such legal provisions across the host countries, however, reflect common limitations — allowing the displaced only a temporary stay status and disregarding the enjoyment of human rights of the people displaced by climate-related disasters, etc. — as they did not target displaced people in their making. For realization of human rights of the displaced within a host countries, each one of them is obliged to understand various impacts of climate change and establish a legal system equipped with meticulous classification of their stay status and accordant social security.