Environmental Migration

Linkages between migration and environment have been the subject of increased attention in the media and political discourses. Though these linkages are far from being recent, climate change shed a new light on the issue, with the risk of overshadowing some important aspects of these linkages. Migration is often presented as an inevitable consequence of climate change, a 'failure of adaptation', but the debates on the conceptualisation of environmental migration remain vivid. In particular, the definition and estimates of environmental migrants remain unclear. The main reasons for these debates are the lack of empirical research on the issue, as well as the important policy implications that can create a bias on the research agenda.

Emergence of a new concept

Environmental factors have been a trigger for migration throughout history, even though climate change might have given the impression that the phenomenon was new. Already in pre-historical times, the first human societies organised themselves around the nexus environment - migration. Empirical evidence from the Lisbon earthquake, in 1755, also mention flows of displaced people seeking refuge in other parts of Portugal, and later brought back to Lisbon. More recently, the Dust Bowl migration that took place in United States during the 1930s exemplifies the multi-causality that usually characterizes environmental migration: drought combined with economic factors and the Great Depression forced thousands of farmers from Oklahoma, Arkansas and Texas to resettle westwards. It is only in the 1970s however that the linkages between environmental changes and migration are mentioned in the academic literature. Following a first mention by William Vogt in 1948, the concept gained some currency in speeches by environmentalist Lester Brown in the 1970s, and was the subject of a report by El-Hinnawi for the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), in 1985. This emergence is linked, to a great extent, to the growing importance of the environment in public policies and international relations. More recently, the first impacts of climate change, as well as the tsunami that hit South-East Asia in December 2004 and the hurricane Katrina that devastated the US Gulf Coast in August 2005, brought increased attention to the topic.

Tensions between environmental and migration studies

Rapidly, tensions between environmental and migration studies emerged: whereas the former forecasted dramatic estimates of future migration flows, the latter adopted a prudent perspective, insisting on the intermingling of environmental factors with other economic, social and political factors. Both fields had a different research agenda: environmental scholars were eager to stress the risks associated with climate change, while migration scholars tried to uphold the rights of migrants and refugees already identified. This controversy between 'alarmists' and 'sceptics' was also the result of a lack of empirical research on the topic. A recent research project funded by the European Commission, EACH-FOR ('Environmental Changes and Forced Migration Scenarios'), aims to fill this gap by studying the linkages between environmental changes and forced migration from an empirical and comparative perspective, through 24 case-studies throughout the world.

A complex relationship

The importance of environmental factors as migration drivers is now acknowledged by most scholars, and so are the increasing complexity and diversity of migration flows. Migration is characterized by a multi-causality of factors, and isolating environmental factors is therefore a difficult (and possibly pointless) endeavour.Environmental migration can be induced by a wide range of environmental disruptions: brutal changes such as natural disasters, but also slow-onset changes such as sea-level rise. Furthermore, these changes can induce different types of displacement: forced or voluntary, internal or international, temporary or permanent. There is no direct causal relationship between environmental change and displacement, which makes it difficult to define and conceptualize environmental migration.Other approaches of the relationship have stressed the possible environmental impacts of migration flows, and security challenges raised by environmental migration. The importance of social vulnerability and adaptation strategies has been highlighted, and migration is increasingly recognized as a possible adaptation response to climate change, which can alleviate its impacts. Some governments have also used environmental disruption as an excuse to justify population displacements.

Definition issue

Many definitions have been proposed, but none has yet been able to reach a scientific consensus. An important difficulty arose from the confusion between voluntary and forced migrants. This distinction bears great importance for policy developments and estimates: the broader the definition, the larger the numbers. Along with Olivia Dun and Robert Stojanov, I proposed to distinguish between environmental migrants, whose movement is voluntary and proactive, and environmental displacees, whose movement is forced and reactive. A third category would be made up of people displaced by development projects such as dams, that we set apart from environmental migration.Other definitions have been proposed by El-Hinnawi and the International Organisation for Migration. These are amongst the most oft-cited, even though no clear definition has yet emerged from the academic debates. As a result, estimates on the number of people displaced by environmental changes vary greatly, from 25 million to several hundreds of millions by 2050.

Policy implications

People displaced by environmental changes are currently not recognised by the 1951 Geneva Convention on the status of refugees, and the term 'environmental refugees' is thus a misnomer. Environmental migration is usually not addressed by migration policies or environmental policies, and raises important policy implications.The first question concerns the status of environmental migrants. Many scholars and advocacy groups argue that an international status should be granted to environmental migrants, either through a new international convention or an amendment to the Geneva Convention. Such a status would however be difficult to implement, since most people displaced by environmental changes tend to remain within the borders of their country, and thus become internally displaced people (IDPs), who could not benefit from an international status.A second policy implication deals with adaptation strategies. This implication is four-fold:- Adaptation strategies allow to increase the resilience of the populations affected, and reduce the migration pressure.- Adaptation mechanisms are also needed to help destination regions deal with potential influxes of environmental migrants.- Environmental migration itself, in some cases, can be used as an adaptation strategy to cope with the impacts of environmental change and alleviate them.Third, environmental migration also raises the issue of environmental responsibility and justice, especillay with regard to climate change. The fundamental injustice of climate change postulates that the regions that will be most affected by its impacts are also those that have the least carrying capacity and the least responsibility for climate change. Mechanisms acknowledging environmental responsibility would allow the development of burden-sharing and compensation arrangements.Finally, environmental migration will impact development processes, and environmental migration is not yet mainstreamed into development policies or environmental governance.

From:http://knol.google.com/k/francois-gemenne/environmental-migration/qrmnmkeyllpq/2#