Common Concern of Humankind
In 1992, two landmark international agreements declared respectively that climate change and biodiversity loss are common concern of humankind (“CCH”). The doctrine of CCH originated in the context of addressing shared problems which pose threats to the international community of States as a whole. The solution was grounded on limiting State sovereignty to protect both the environment beyond national jurisdictions as well as the globally relevant resources within national jurisdictions. Today, CCH emphasises that without the participation of all States, it is unthinkable to solve the increasingly complex and pervasive global problems.
Our project hypothesises that environmentally-induced migration is a CCH. We view human movement in the context of environmental changes as being arranged along a spectrum of temporary to permanent, internal to cross-border, and voluntary to forced. Furthermore, we observe that this movement can be strategised through the framework of “migration as an adaptation”, and find applications in a plethora of legal pathways for migration, including labour mobility, services mobility and planned relocation.
Internationally, the most recent recognition of the CCH is the 2015 Paris Agreement, which restates that climate change is a common concern of humankind. We aim to draw links particularly with the climate change regime to understand the definition, content and application of the CCH and to assess its appropriateness for environmentally-induced migration.