<![CDATA[Climate change has emerged as an existential catalyst for human mobility, causing widespread environmental degradation, sea-level rise, severe drought, and extreme weather events that displace millions of individuals across international borders. Despite the escalating scale of this humanitarian crisis, individuals forced to migrate due to environmental disruption exist within a distinct legal limbo. International refugee law, fundamentally anchored in the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, excludes climate-induced displacement from its protection criteria, which strictly require individualized persecution based on race, religion, nationality, social group, or political opinion. This study investigates the governance vacuums surrounding environmental displacement and evaluates avenues for normative legal reform. Utilizing a qualitative normative-legal approach and comparative international law analysis, this research addresses two core discussion themes: first, the structural limitations of the 1951 Refugee Convention alongside the evolving jurisprudence of human rights-based non-refoulement obligations, specifically examining the landmark decision in Teitiota v. New Zealand and the restrictive legal doctrine of "imminence"; and second, the formulation of legal protection frameworks by assessing regional instruments—such as the African Union's Kampala Convention and Latin America's Cartagena Declaration—as functional blueprints for expanding complementary protections, establishing cumulative human rights returnability thresholds, and institutionalizing global normative standards.]]>
