Nowadays: internally displaced persons

DEVELOPING and protecting rights as part of the efforts to safeguard the environment, attain sustainable development and alleviate poverty and inequalities is a current concern in many parts of the world. This was brought about by the grand-scale and unprecedented phenomenon of environmental refugees as a consequence of natural disasters and unnatural ones like armed conflicts.

Among basic human rights, the right to life and dignity intrinsically tied to the right to an ecologically and humanly viable environment, is lately most written about, discussed and dissected. It is a big issue vis-a-vis climate justice and the future generations of environmental refugees who cross national borders and internally displaced persons who leave their homes or places of abode and move to another place within their own country. Environmental refugees in the Philippine archipelago are commonly referred to as internally displaced persons. (In some Pacific island states most vulnerable to sea level rise, people prefer to be called climate migrants).