A background to the term "environmental refugee": part 2

The term "environmental refugee" is used in many newspaper articles, press releases and civil society releases. It is a term used all around the world. Many international institutions are developing policies that address the concerns environmental refugees may have.

However, in academic and policy arenas, the term is widely disputed. New research argues that the term has been rejected by academic authors (Meyer, forthcoming). 

This is based on the claim by academic, law and policy decision-makers that the term "environmental refugee"  has no legal claim to the term "refugee" and therefore is invalid. According to the Refugee Convention, a refugee is

        ...a person who owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality, and is unable to or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country. (United Nations Geneva Refugee Convention, 1951)


According to the Inter Agency Standing Committee (IASC), a smaller agency that works in cooperation with the UNHCR and which upholds many of the UNHCR's views, environmental factors such as a tsunami or desertification are not considered legitimate claims for asylum. In other words, a person can only be considered a "refugee" if they have experienced persecution due to race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political organisation, and so on.

An environmental refugee is not a "refugee".

Photo credit: United Nations University

There is consequently very limited legal recognition of environmental refugees. There is very little policy or legal protection of environmental refugees.

In the next 40 years, small island states such as Tuvalu and Kiribati will be inundated. These entire nations will be flooded due to climate change induced sea level rise. But this is not yet recognised in law and policy where it matters.

A background to the term "environmental refugee": part 1

In the late 1980s, early 1990s, policy-makers and academics began to realise the significance of environmental degradation in relation to human movement. The literature commonly attributes the origin of the term "environmental refugee" to Essam El-Hinnawi in 1985; this is slightly incorrect, however. In fact, the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) first used the word in a 1984 briefing document, whereby the environmental refugee was defined as a person or peoples who have exhausted the natural resources of their homelands due to mismanagement and evacuate due to this. It is interesting that the first definition of the term "environmental refugee" was not sympathetic to their cause and indicated that the responsibility be the refugee's own doing.

It was after this, therefore, that El-Hinnawi, researcher for United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP), popularised the notion that an environmental refugee is a person who has forced to become a refugee and flee from environmental disasters. El-Hinnawi brought in the era of dramatised pictures of desperate refugees fleeing disaster and utterly distraught.

Photo credit: Permaculture Research Institute

 

Photo credit: Triple Pundit

I am critical of the representation of these people as victims and refugees who are completely helpless. These people are not completely helpless; they may be in help, but there are still things these people can do to survive.

Norman Myers is also a notable academic and policy adviser who's influence has resulted in the increasing popularity of the term "environmental refugee" and a growing social alarm at unprecedented numbers of refugees moving into safer lands of the often more developed.

The backlash was substantial.

 

 

 

 

*to be continued*