The legal category of forced environmental displacement from the perspective of global debt in the tecnocene

Abstract

Forced environmental displacement is a serious social scourge of our time, the Technocene. Its lack of recognition as an autonomous legal category exacerbates the negative effects suffered by its victims, while the territorial degradation it produces is aggravated by anthropogenic activities originating in the Global North that generate environmental damage in countries of the Global South. This situation stems from the historical inequity in the distribution of environmental benefits and burdens on a global scale, caused by the colonial power relations that have prevailed on the planet since the 15th century, in which countries of the Global South are debtors and those of the Global North are creditors of external debt. The notion of global environmental debt posits that countries of the Global South are creditors who, for centuries, have made their natural resources available to the world without equivalent compensation or reparation for the damage caused. This work seeks to understand the legal scope of the concept of forced environmental displacement, as well as to identify the practices that constitute global environmental debt, in order to establish a link between them, through the theoretical methodology of systematic documentary review, in order to raise awareness about the need to recognize these phenomena as instruments of environmental justice that allow us to move towards another way of inhabiting the planet.