Environmental
Refugees
By Andrew Simms
The
Guardian
15 October , 2003
The
number of people seeking refuge as a result of environmental disaster
is set to increase dramatically over the coming years.
Though they have
no official status, environmental refugees are already with us. They
are people who have been forced to flee their homes because of factors
such as extreme weather, drought and desertification. There are already
more of them than their "political" counterparts - 25 million,
according to the last estimate, compared to around 22 million conventional
refugees at their highest point in the late 1990s. By 2050, mostly due
to the likely effects of global warming, there could be more than 150
million.
In 2001, 170 million
people were affected by disasters, 97% of which were climate-related,
such as floods, droughts and storms. In the previous decade more than
100 million suffered drought and famine in Africa, a figure likely to
increase with global warming. Many times more were affected by floods
in Asia.
According to one
study, at least five small island states are at risk of ceasing to exist.
There are several serious unanswered questions. What will happen to
the exclusive economic zones of such countries, and what status will
their populations have? Where whole nations become uninhabitable, should
they have new lands carved out for them? Or should they become the first
true world citizens? If there is no state left, how can the state protect
its citizens?
Sea level rise in
the range expected by the intergovernmental panel on climate change
would devastate the Maldives. Without real international legal protection,
their people could become resented minorities in Sri Lanka, itself threatened,
or India, with its own problems. On the small South Pacific island of
Tuvalu, people already have an ad hoc agreement with New Zealand to
allow phased relocation. Up to 10 million could be displaced in the
Philippines, millions more in Cambodia, Thailand, Egypt, China, across
Latin America - the list goes on.
The effects of these
population movements are likely to be highly destabilising globally
unless they are carefully managed. But, in spite of the scale of the
problem, no one in the international community, including the UN high
commission for refugees (UNHCR), has taken control of the problem. UNHCR
says that, institutionally, they are too poor and that environmental
refugees should be dealt with at the national level. It's true that
most parts of the UN system are underfunded. Ironically this, like global
warming, is mostly the fault of wealthy industrialised countries for
either not raising or meeting their contributions.
But without action,
the countries least responsible for creating the problem stand to carry
the largest share of costs associated with environmental refugees. Bangladesh,
one of the world's poorest countries, expects to have around 20 million
people displaced. Creating new legal obligations to accept environmental
refugees would help ensure that industrialised countries accept the
consequences of their choices. In certain circumstances, the suggestion
that the solution must lie at the national level could be absurd - the
national level may be under water.
In the academic
community, there has been much quibbling over definitions. Some would
exclude environmental refugees from the protection the Geneva convention
affords because, they say, recognition would be "unhelpful",
overloading the existing refugee apparatus. The alternative, though,
is to rely on current humanitarian relief operations that are widely
considered inadequate. The convention could, however, already be used
in its current form. Refugees are defined as people forced to flee across
an international border because of a well-founded fear of persecution,
or fear for their lives and freedom due to, among other things, membership
of a particular group.
In terms of well-founded
fears, drowning, homelessness or starvation would seem to fit the bill.
In terms of membership of a particular group, any community or indigenous
group similarly prone would also fit. Numerous countries already cannot
afford to meet the basic needs of their people. Without proper environmental
refugee status, the displaced could be condemned to a national economic
and geographical lottery, and to the patchwork availability of resources
and application of immigration policies.
There is a wide
acceptance that current national policies would not be remotely capable
of handling the scale of the problem. The environment can clearly be
"a tool to harm". But to fit the argument for refugee status,
can the harm be called intentional? Yes, if a set of policies is pursued
in full knowledge of their damaging consequences, such as flooding a
valley where an ethnic minority might live in a dam-building project.
The causes and consequences
of climate change - who is responsible and who gets hurt - are now well
understood. Actively disregarding that knowledge would be intentional
behaviour. Current US energy plans, for example, will increase greenhouse
emissions 25% by 2010. This is a question of justice in adaptation to
climate change. Environmental refugees need to be recognised, and the
problem managed before it manages us.
Andrew
Simms is policy director at the New Economics Foundation