Paper short abstract:

This paper introduces a new research perspective on climate change migration and adaptation, which is based on legal anthropology. The aim is to develop an engaged, locally grounded and analytically fruitful perspective on the effects of climate change.

Paper long abstract:

This paper develops a new concept of how to frame the cultural and social impacts of climate change. The research perspective presented, the Anthropology of Emerging Legal Orders, overcomes shortcomings of notions of vulnerability and resilience as frames for adaptation to climate change and helps us to analyze recent developments on the island state of Kiribati in the central Pacific. As Kiribati is highly affected by climate change, it is one of the first nations in the world in which issues such as climate justice and the search for strategies for climate migrants have become tangible. The government of Kiribati has adopted a proactive role to deal with adaptation and climate change migration. The paper analyses how the government brings together climate change discourses with its struggle for new rights and resources for the country. The implications of anthropogenic climate change generate radical new parameters for law making processes that create emerging legal orders. As climate change is endangering the very existence of Kiribati, we could learn from the new concepts of belonging, migration and solidarity that are developing in the Pacific region. Kiribati could, in this way, emerge as an icon of a new approach to citizenship, mobility and climate change solidarity.