Environmental Degradation: the Phenomenon of Environmental Refugees
In the present time, with an increase in the ecological imbalances and extreme environmental degradation over the last 3 decades, the vulnerable community has been affected deplorably and violently as a result. The pressing problem of environmental challenges, migration and international security are entwining in international and parliamentary debates, policy making discussions, research and media, which has led the states to acknowledge a new class of refuges often termed as. “environmental refugees”. To overcome the changing environmental patterns, people chose to migrate as a mean to survive. In this environmental degradation essay will be ab attempt to discuss the phenomen of “environmental refugees” as the result of environmental degradation.
In 1992, the UNHCR, Mrs. Sadako Ogata at the UN Conference on Environment and Development explained that “environmental degradation is not only a cause but also a consequence of refugee movements.” Migration due to environment change is not a new phenomenon , there are historical evidences highlighting the trend of moving due to ecological disharmony such as the Eurasian migration of the Huns, Turks and Mongols from the first millennium BCE till the Thirteenth century AD; another documented example is the migration related to the American ‘Dust-Bowl’ across the U.S. states in the 1930s. Thus, it has become essentially important to legally define and regulate aspects of forced displacement. From the Sea level rise displacing the island population in the South-Pacific; to the desertification like in the sub-saharan Africa linked to slow-moving migration and the extreme weather across the world with Hurricane Katrine in the US and Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines linked to temporary displacement, the environmental displacement has been conceptualised. “Environmental refugees” are “people who migrate because of serious environmental disruptions that make their habitats unliveable temporarily or permanently.” A prime example of people forced from their lands due to climate change is the Carteret Island, also called as the world’s first climate refugees. A rapid influx in the number of climate refugees is considered as a threat of the national security of the receiving states.
There are substantial challenges to establish an international responsibility with an agenda to address the problems faced by the victims of the displacement. In 2016, the world bank suggested that the richest countries of the South Pacific, Australia and New Zealand, should start facilitating legal immigration routes to avoid mass forced migration in the near future, for the people who belong to the low-lying Pacific islands. As per the UNCCD estimates, around 50 million people will be displaced in the next 10 years due to desertification. Furthermore, there have been estimates suggesting that between 25 million to one billion people could be displaced by climate change over the next 4 decades. The International Federation of the Red Cross evaluated that there are more environmental refugees than political refugees with a view to avoid wars and conflicts, causing societal strains at a global level; the mobility patterns are often influenced by climate change. Displacement can be short term, long term and accidental. As early as 1990, the intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) created by the UN Environmental Program and the W warned that “ the greatest single impact of climate change could be on human migration” – with an unaccounted number of people displaced by shoreline erosion, coastal flooding and severe drought. In 2014, IPCC in its fifth Assessment report estimated that the emissions of the carbon dioxide as one of the most dominant factors for global warming and consequently causing climate change. The UNHCR urged to recognise the climate refugees in international law and develop a convention to protect their basic rights but it also observed that in reality, the liable countries are mistreating climate refugees in the absence of a formal recognition system. However, the negative impacts of the environment degradation are mounting alarmingly, despite the mitigation policies undertaken so far to control them.
The ‘climate justice’ initiative is a formal framework that first came into light in June 2002, at the UN World Summit on Sustainable Development in Bali. It affirms the right of the victims of environmental degradation to receive full compensation, restoration and reparation of loss of the livelihood and other damages thereby, imparting justice to the victims of such change i.e., the environmental refugees. Since there is no international legal recognition or convention for environmental refugees, they face greater political risk as they end up in refugee detention camps instead of secure shelters, than those refugees who flee from their homeland due to armed conflict etc. After the world war II, to protect the human rights of the victims in Europe, the International refugee mechanism were created such as the refugee convention 1951 and the 1967 protocol relating to the stats of refugee. However, none of the refugee protection mechanisms protect and recognise the environmental refugees, making it an outdated and insufficient system pf protection. Lester brown in 1976, of the world watch institute was the first to propose the term “environmental refuges”.
To date, there is no legal definition that has been internationally recognised and accepted for persons who are forced to move for environmental reasons. In addition, the environmentally displaced persons who may be in danger of becoming stateless are often termed as climate exiles. Persons moving due to environmental factors are protected under the International human rights law. Furthermore, the ones who are internally displaced due to natural or man-made disasters are protected by the provisions laid down in the Guiding Principles on Internal displacement. However, the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) has given a working definition of “environmental migration”, it proposes that: Environmental migrants are persons or groups of persons who, for compelling reasons of sudden or progressive changes in the environment that adversely affects their lives or living conditions, are obliged to leave their habitual homes, or choose to do so, either temporarily or permanently, and who move either within their country or abroad. The causes of today’s migration issues of the environmentally displaced people are – the strict regulations of the states at and across the borders , the rising level of the emission of carbon dioxide, especially after 1900 leading to climate change that causes displacement and lastly, the greenhouse gas emission. However the fourth cause for migrating due to climate is the lack of political recognition, that is to say, that the policies emerged after the Kyoto era has accelerated the mass displacement as the sovereign and developed states were fully aware of their political choices on the environment, thereby forming liability and negligence on the part of the government. According to Kibreab, the term ‘environmental refugees’ was invented to further restrict asylum laws and procedures in order to derogate from their obligation to provide asylum. The International laws prevailing today do not entail the states to provide asylum to those displaced by environmental degradation, the Northern states therefore label them as environmental refugees with an objective to exclude them from protection.
The author of this essay disagrees with Kibreab’s explanation for inventing the term “environmental refugees”. The author is of the view that, people who are displaced due to environmental degradation are forced to move out of their homelands, such forcibly displaced people must be considered as an extension of the term “refugee” with the changing time and circumstances, they must be protected in the same manner a refugee or an asylum seeker is rather than giving them as a political recognition with a view to exclude them from protection of their basic fundamental human rights.
