FROM ENVIRONMENTAL RIGHT TO DISPLACEMENT REMEDY: ARTICLE 9A AND A RIGHTS-BASED FRAMEWORK FOR CLIMATEINDUCED INTERNAL DISPLACEMENT IN PAKISTAN

Abstract

Climate displacement exposes a structural weakness in environmental and disaster law: a State may recognise environmental harm, regulate disaster response and guarantee an environmental right without clearly defining what is owed to a person whose home, land or livelihood has become unsafe. Pakistan presents an important post-2024 case. Its courts had already derived environmental protection from the constitutional rights to life and dignity before the Twenty-Sixth Constitutional Amendment inserted Article 9A, expressly entitling every person to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment. The Supreme Court has since treated that guarantee as an operative fundamental right. Yet the consequences of Article 9A for internally displaced persons remain uncertain. This article argues that climate-induced internal displacement should be understood not only as a humanitarian or disaster-management problem but as a continuity-of-rights problem. Internal movement changes a person's location without suspending constitutional citizenship. Reading Article 9A with Articles 9, 14, 15, 23, 24 and 25 provides a constitutional basis for protecting displaced persons across the displacement cycle. The article proposes a five-stage framework - Prevention, Evacuation, Protection, Relocation and Durable Solution - and identifies the different constitutional interests and procedural safeguards that intensify at each stage. The framework does not make the State an insurer against every climate loss. Instead, it seeks to connect Pakistan's environmental constitutionalism, disaster institutions and climate governance around the displaced rights-holder.