Law change needed to cover climate exiles - lawyers

LONDON (Reuters) - International law is unfit to deal with the millions of people expected to flee their home countries to escape droughts and floods intensified by climate change, a group of lawyers said on Thursday.

Under existing laws, host countries must protect and care for cross-border refugees, who are defined as those forced to migrate because of violence or political, racial or religious persecution.

There are no such provisions for so-called climate refugees. Yet by 2050, between 200 million and 1 billion people could be forced to leave their homes because of global warming, said the Foundation for International Environmental Law and Development, which advises vulnerable countries and communities.

"International refugee law ... was not designed for those who are left homeless by environmental pressures," said the group's director Joy Hyvarinen.

"The international legal framework needs to be adjusted to help climate exiles and deal with statelessness and compensation," she said in a statement.

FIRST CLIMATE REFUGEES

Climate change will hit small island states the hardest, the foundation said, adding rising seas might submerge Kiribati and the Marshall Islands or climate changes in other ways might make them uninhabitable.

Kiribati's government has asked larger nations, including New Zealand and Australia, to open their doors to its citizens who might become, along with people in the Maldives and other Pacific islands, climate refugees.