Climate Migration & Displacement Project

Climate Migration & Displacement Project (CMDP)

The Climate Migration & Displacement Project (CMDP) is a Berkeley Law pro bono project that supports innovative litigation and policy research to secure rights and protections for populations displaced by climate disasters. This growing field of study and research is incredibly intersectional, touching on many legal issues, including environmental law, gender justice, immigrant rights, Indigenous Peoples’ rights, human security, and international and comparative law. Student participants will have the opportunity to support the research of high-level organizations and institutions by creating legal memos, policy briefs, and literature reviews, as needed by our partners.

Spring 2025 Projects:

  1. Guatemala Case Study Project: Youth Climate Mobility and Sexual and Gender-Based Violence
    1. Project Partner: Our Children’s Trust
    2. Project Description: Students will support a research case study on youth mobility within and outside of Guatemala in light of climate disasters and degradation in climate hot spots across the country. This project specifically looks at the impacts that climate change and mobility have on instances of sexual and gender-based violence for Guatemalan youth in displacement.
  2. Litigation Strategies to Secure the Right to life-sustaining Climate: Youth in the Context of Climate
      1. Project Partner: Our Children’s Trust
      2. Project Description:  Students will support research for a literature review of legal scholarship on the intersection of climate migration/displacement, children and youth, and sex and gender-based violence to inform litigation strategy. This project focuses on rights-based litigation strategies in the context of displacement and litigation strategies for sex/gender-based violence accountability in humanitarian zones.
  3. California Climate Change Assessment: Literature Review of Climate Migration & Displacement in CA
    1. Project Partners: The Human Rights Center at Berkeley Law and the Othering and Belonging Institute.
    2. Project Description: this project is focused on providing a literature review on the impacts of climate change on communities and sectors across California. Students will draft a memo outlining the impacts that climate change is having on sectors in California, including the economy, housing, health, natural resources, energy, transportation, education, and community identity.

Supervision: Students will be supervised by attorneys at the Human Rights Center.

Time Commitment: There will be weekly mandatory research training sessions over lunch on Mondays from 12:25-2:00 pm. Students will need to join every research session and will otherwise need to complete the rest of their weekly research independently. There will also be monthly meetings with our project partners and supervisors at the Human Rights Center. Student participants can expect to spend between 30-35 hours per semester on this project. Students supporting the California Climate Change Assessment Project might require more hours of research than other projects.

Students will be expected to attend numerous training sessions: (1) an introduction to climate mobility with an expert in the field; (2) an introduction to the Human Rights Center and their Climate Justice Program; (3) research training with the librarian; (4) open-source investigations training with the Human Rights Center; and (5) potentially other project-specific training sessions.

For more information, please contact the student leaders at CMDP@berkeley.edu.