La traductibilité de réfugiés environnementaux dans le contexte français

We recently noticed increased media coverage of the expression/collocation réfugiés environnementaux. The aforementioned collocation is omnipresent in the French media; it has been circulating and has been in use for over twenty years. However, why has environmental refugee been chosen in English? The main argument is that this expression officially appeared as early as in 1985, in the report for the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), so it is a UN term. There are currently other names that supplant it: déplacés or migrants; nonetheless, the term réfugié has a much greater impact given the implicity of its meaning. We shall see why the term réfugiés environnementaux/climatiques is in current use and why it is preferred to déplacés and migrants climatiques/environnementaux. The aim of this article is to detail the terms employed expanding on dictionary explanations, as well as to clarify the analysis of the journalistic and legal contexts. To conclude, we shall unveil the terms which seem to us best suited.