A revised version of this working paper has been published as:
Mayer, Benoît. 2012 (forthcoming). Environmental Migration in the Asia-Pacific Region: Could We Hang Out Sometime? Asian Journal of International Law.
Several proposals for global legal governance of environmental migration have recently been published, almost exclusively by Western scholars. While governance of environmental migration is most likely to succeed in the regional arena, this article argues that Asia and the Pacific (and their sub-regions) should determine the content of regional legal approaches of environmental migration. While environmental migration is a reality in many places of Asia and the Pacific, research on governance options led in the global West are rarely based on empirical research. This article suggests a postcolonial critique of the discourse on a global governance of environmental migration. Establishing and participating in a multi-civilizational forum of best practices is a unique opportunity for rising regions of Asia and the Pacific to affirm their growing role in the international community and to demonstrate the compatibility of “Asian values” with a liberal form of transnational governance.
