Law 2577/2026 recognising internal forced displacement caused by climate change, environmental degradation, and natural disasters

The Law 2577/2026 formally recognises displacement caused by climate change, environmental degradation, and natural disasters and commits to developing guidelines to identify and characterise affected people, families, communities, and productive units, with special attention to women and girls in vulnerable situations, and to protecting food sovereignty/security. It establishes that the climatic impacts, environmental degradation and natural disasters must be serious or must threaten or cause harm to the rights of individuals and communities, with the Ministry of Environment and UNGRD (the disaster risk agency) setting the severity criteria. The law creates a new Single Register of Environmental Displacement (RUDA in Spanish), covering anyone at risk of or experiencing this displacement, including preventive evacuees; registration can occur before, during, or after displacement, and each case must first be certified by UNGRD as either natural (triggering full state assistance) or human-caused. Once certified, people receive basic needs, infrastructure and economic rehabilitation, and voluntary safe return or resettlement, with full reparation where recovery isn't possible. The law sets several implementation deadlines: within 6 months, Institute of Hydrology, Meteorology and Environmental Studies, the Ministry of Environment, and UNGRD must jointly define the technical criteria for identifying this type of displacement, and separately, the National Planning Department must formulate a national public policy on the issue (updated every 5 years); within 8 months, UNGRD must build and launch RUDA; affected people have 2 years from the triggering event to file a declaration; and UNGRD must open a verification process within 5 business days of learning of an event and certify it within 3 months. Finally, the statute creates no dedicated fund or budget line for implementation.