Climate Change, Ecocide, and the Rise of Environmental Refugees: The Case of Syria

This article revisits the climate-conflict-displacement nexus by analyzing the Syrian Civil War as a case of climate-exacerbated state collapse. Rejecting linear causality, it asks: how does climate-induced stress contribute to armed conflict and forced migration, and how might these dynamics be understood through ecocide? Drawing on international relations, legal studies, and environmental studies, we develop a framework positioning environmental refugeedom and ecocide as concepts revealing international legal categories’ insufficiencies. Examining Syria, we show how drought, environmental mismanagement, and authoritarian governance intensified grievances, fueling conflict and mass displacement. Rather than presenting climate change as a singular cause, we argue for its role as a threat multiplier within authoritarian rule, developmental failure, and global inequality structures. The article contributes by proposing expanded conceptual vocabulary to capture environmental collapse’s political violence. It calls for rethinking state responsibility, legal protection frameworks, and human rights paradigms under planetary crisis—especially in authoritarian regimes facing ecological breakdown.