A critical review of: Karen Elizabeth McNamara, Chris Gibson, ‘We do not want to leave our land’: Pacific ambassadors at the United Nations resist the category of ‘climate refugees’, Geoforum (2009), 40: 475–483 John A. Church, Neil J. White, John R. Hunter, Sea-level rise at tropical Pacific and Indian Ocean islands, Global and Planetary Change (2006) 53: 155–168.

1. Geography of Developing Countries
Climate Change and Islands states
(Church, White and Hunter 2005; McNamara and Gibson 2009)
Gohar Grigoryan - Ksenia Kozhemyakina - Liliana Lozano - Kadri Nadia - Tomasz Nowacki

2. Paper 1:
Sea-level rise at tropical Pacific and Indian Ocean islands
• Important points:
1.
2.
3.
The paper applies scientific methods to collect data and to analyze the sea level
rise and is itself scientific, therefore can be used as research base for further
analyses in the field;
The paper is based on the analysis of different sources (sea-levels records from
tide gauges and from TOPEX/Poseidon Satellite) and different case studies:
Tuvalu (Pacific ocean) and Maldives (Indian ocean);
The paper covers different islands and its findings are therefore representative.
• Critiques:
1.
The paper is too technical; it is meant for a specialized (limited) group of readers.

3. Paper 2:
‘We do not want to leave our land’: Pacific Ambassadors at the United Nations
resist the category of ‘climate refugees’
• Important points:
1. The paper aims to deconstruct the concept of ‘climate refugees’;
2. The paper is not concerned with climate change facts and figures and is therefore
meant for researchers in different disciplines;
3. The paper places the environmental issues into the geopolitical context (the West
[industrialized world] and developing countries).
• Critiques:
1.
2.
3.
The paper does not cover all the points as stated in the introduction section;
The sampling of interviewees is not representative (the interviews have been held
only with ambassadors (5));
The connection between migration and environmental refugees is not evident;
there are both arguments and contra-arguments and the paper does not provide any
final solution to whether the “climate refugee” status is derivative from climate
change or it is resulted by lack of economic activities