‘Environmental refugee’ is a term that is gaining in popularity. This new sustainable development fashionable term seems quite self-explanatory. From the outset, it gives some idea of its meaning: refugees that flee due to environmental causes. But from an international law point of view, the combination of the words ‘environmental’ and ‘refugee’, with their respective implications, add up to a complex concept which cannot be so simply defined.
Because the international legal refugee regime does not recognizeenvironmentally displaced persons, opinions are divided as to which legal status should be accorded to those migrants as well as to the possible and best solutions to address this growing problem. In the next pages, a brief presentation of the legal issues triggered bythe de facto environmentally displaced persons will precede a review of the main positions fuelling the debate regarding the legal status of these displaced people. While the adoption of a new instrument rallies the majority as being the solution that best answers these legal loopholes, there is no general agreement as to the form and content nor as to the approach to this new convention. Whether to it is the perspective from which to tackle the problem, that is through refugee or environmental point of view, or the rights and obligations incumbent upon the States and migrants, the idea of a newinternational instrument raises many issues. This paper will focus on the former of these points and will discuss more specifically two approaches to decision-making as to the qualification of a migrant for help granted by this hypothetical convention, by sketchingsome of the legal issues arising from both an individual and from a group assessment basis.