Linking Energy Poverty, Environmental Justice and Forced Displacement: Controversies and Ways Forward

This chapter investigates the nexus between energy poverty, environmental justice and forced displacement. It does so by critically examining the literature on existing controversies and disputes surrounding forced displacement in the context of climate change and environmental degradation. Major debates concern conceptual unclarity, lack of legal definition and empirical obstacles to providing reliable data on the number of environmentally (forced) displaced people. In particular, the lack of recognition and legal status of people displaced in the aftermath of environmental disruptions requires a deeper reflection on future/alternative policies that this chapter seeks to address. In advancing a community-based approach, this chapter explores ways forward by suggesting energy communities as an ‘environmentally just’ space to improve collective capabilities to resist and adapt to environmental degradation and the impacts of climate change. The development of such a community-based approach may be useful to provide policy-makers proposals for designing anticipatory governance of forced displacement in the context of climate change and environmental degradation.