Consequences of environmental refugees: towards a conceptual framework

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 International Geographical Union  Hong Kong
International Population Conference, Chinese
University of HongKong, 10th-12th July 2007
Consequences of environmental refugees towards a
conceptual framework
Allan M Findlay and Alistair Geddes
Centre for Applied Population Research University
of Dundee Dundee DD1 4HN, UK a.m.findlay_at_dundee.ac
.uk
Image source Black R (1998) Refugees,
Environment and Development (London Longman)
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Paper Outline

• Introduction
• Debate over environmental refugees
• Consequences of debate evidence of new
  conceptual framework(s)
• In particular, the borderland with work on
  vulnerable populations

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• Introduction

• Debate over environmental refugees has not been
  resolved
• However, both proponents and critics have made
  calls for more research to understand root or
  underlying causes, and to link research to
  practice
• What evidence is there of this from recent
  literature?
• What are the overlapsthe borderland between
  this literature and recent work on other aspects
  of vulnerable populations?

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2. The environmental refugees debate

• 1985 term became used in reports by several
  international organisations
• Notably El-Hinnawi (1985) Environmental Refugees,
  United Nations Environment Program, Nairobi.
• 1990s debate shaped around the views of Norman
  Myers and Richard Black
• Key publications
• Myers and Kent 1995 Environmental Exodus An
  Emergent Crisis in the Global Arena. Report for
  Climate Institute, Washington DC
• Black, 1998 Refugees, Environment and
  Development (London Longman).
• Black 2001 Environmental Refugees Myth or
  Reality? United Nations High Commissioner for
  Refugees, Working Paper No 34, Geneva.

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Myers view

• Clear causal connection
• There are fast growing numbers of people who can
  no longer gain a secure livelihood in their
  homelands because of drought, soil erosion,
  desertification, deforestation and other
  environmental problems. In their desperation,
  these environmental refugees feel they have
  no alternative to seek sanctuary elsewhere,
  however hazardous the attempt
• Numbers
• Myers claimed that by 1995 there were at least
  25 million environmental refugees, and that total
  could double by 2010 due to global warming
• There could be as many as 200 million at risk
  updated this year, to 250 million

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Myers view

• Push for recognition
• We cannot continue to ignore environmental
  refugees simply because there is no
  institutionalized mode of dealing with them. If
  official standing were to be accorded to these
  refugees, this might help to engender a
  recognized constituency for, for example, those
  900 million people who endure some degree of
  desertification
• p. 612 in Myers (2002) Environmental refugees a
  growing phenomenon of the 21st century, Phil.
  Transactions of the Royal Society, Series B, 347
  (1420), 609-13.

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Myers view

• Prominent in popularising the term

New Economics Foundation2003
Christian Aid last month
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Myers Publications

• 1993 Environmental refugees in a globally warmed
  world, Bioscience, 43 (11), 752-6.
• 1995 Environmental Exodus An Emergent Crisis in
  the Global Arena. Report for Climate Institute,
  Washington DC (with J.Kent).
• 2001 Environmental refugees, Population and
  Environment A Journal of Interdisciplinary
  Studies, 19, 167-82.
• 2002 Environmental refugees a growing
  phenomenon of the 21st century, Phil.
  Transactions of the Royal Society, Series B, 347
  (1420), 609-13.
• 2005 Environmental refugees an emergent
  security issue. Paper presented to the 13th
  Economic Forum, Prague, May 22.

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CriticsBlacks position

• Has consistently rejected the conceptual and
  political merit of Myers argument
• Conceptual
• Forced displacement is multi-causal so the role
  of environmental change in forced displacement is
  by no means easy to determine
• environmental refugees threatens to skew
  understanding towards proximate causes, rather
  than focussing on underlying forces (political,
  economic, social)
• Questions actual evidence to demonstrate the
  linkage which Myers claims

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Blacks position

• Political
• refugee is already legally defined concern
  that popularity of environmental refugee in
  fact de-politicises causes of displacement
• Also ignores internal displacement
• Potential for withdrawal of asylum assistance
• Especially in developing world asylum regimes in
  North are already strict
• Adverse effects on other policy responses
• guided by proximate causes of displacement,
  rather than an analysis of underlying causes

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Blacks position

• The complex interrelationships involved confound
  a scientific blueprint approach
• what is required in both research and policy is
  a more flexible, place-specific and yet
  theoretically informed approach, that is aware of
  both political and historical context (p.22,
  Black, 1998)
• Blacks work generally well-received by social
  scientists (sympathetic to social constructivism
  and how labels are manipulated by those in power,
  and suspicious of recommending Myers type of
  preventative policies), but ignored by
  development NGOs and most physical scientists

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Publications

• Richard Black
• 1998 Refugees, Environment and Development
  (London Longman).
• 2001 Environmental Refugees Myth or Reality?
  United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees,
  Working Paper No 34, Geneva.
• Also
• Kibreab, G. (1997) Environmental causes and
  impact of refugee movements a critique of the
  current debate, Disasters, 21(1) 20-38
• Castles, S. (2002), Environmental change and
  forced migration making sense of the debate,
  UNHCR Working Paper No 70, Geneva.

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So, what might be the consequences of the debate?

• Both Myers and Black (and others) have called for
  further research to understand relationships
  between environmental degradation and forced
  migrationi.e., the role environment actually
  plays, but the nature of the research to be
  undertaken depends on what is knowable and
  ones methodological stance.
• How should the academy (and population geography
  in particular) engage in this area of concern?

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3. Consequences of debate contrasting
conceptual framework(s)?

• Approach A Policies linked to scientific
  forecasting, assessment of population
  vulnerability in exposure to climatic change and
  promotion of strategies to increase ability to
  adapt (rather than move)
• Eg analysis of IPCC scenarios makes possible
  identification of populations most at risk.
  Geographers at CIESIN (2006) have mapped
  Vulnerability to Climate Change based on
• a) IPCC scenarios,
• b) population sensitivity to climate change, and
• c) assessments of adaptive capacity

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CIESIN projections of vulnerability to climate
change



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What would such an approach mean for policy
research on environmental refugees?

• Focusing international resources in countries
  with the greatest vulnerability (eg in East Arica
  and China)
• Targeted policy measures to reduce the scale of
  environmental migration
  - increase resilience
  (awareness progs) - reduce
  sensitivity (mitigation measures)
  - increase adaptability (livelihood alternatives)
  _
• 3) Advocacy of greater spatial sensitivity in
  the international migration policies of receiving
  countries (akin to the way that policies on
  acceptance of political refugees is linked to a
  list of at risk source countries)

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Problems of Approach A

• Top down (exports solving the problem to a select
  number of developing countries) and is of course
  only paliative
• Continues to endorse a mono-causal reductionist
  view of migration
• Constructs environmentally-linked moves as
  negative
• Ignores social construction of vulnerability

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3. Consequences of debate contrasting
conceptual framework(s)?

• Approach B Some look to political ecology
• as a broadly-defined, geographical approach
• with a characteristic dialogic and
  interactive mode of enquiry with other
  sub-fields and cognate disciplines
• avoids technocratic approach to problem-solving,
  with instead emphasis on understanding political
  role of different actors in influencing social
  and environmental outcomes
• in consequence, greater support for
  place-specific / bottom-up responses to
  environmental conflict
• After Zimmerer K. 2007 Cultural ecology (and
  political ecology) in the environmental
  borderlands exploring the environmental
  connectivities within geography, Progress in
  Human Geography, 3(2) 227-44

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Evidence from recent literature

• Difference between (a) simply accepting shared
  importance of environmental, political and
  economic considerations, and (b) how environment
  actually becomes integrated in migration
  decisions
• Led to interest in understanding local social
  relations
• in recent migration studies, recognises
  importance of understanding migration
  subjectivity
• and in political ecology, understanding social
  construction of natural resources and their
  management

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Evidence from recent literature

• Theorising local social relations draws on
  Foucauldian theory of power/knowledge
• Power as an active, open, effect, productive of
  new knowledge and ways of knowing which
  continuously structure the effect of power.
• Example
• Carr, E. 2005 Placing the environment in
  migration environment, economy and power in
  Ghanas Central Region, Environment and Planning
  A, 27 925-946

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Problems of Approach B

• While strong on understanding causes is weak on
  identifying solutions
• Unlikely to be resourced by most international
  agencies because of difficulties of implementing
  a bottom-up approach
• Like approach A is at risk of seeing mobility as
  a problem

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4. Borderlands with understanding of
vulnerable populations

• Post-debate research on environmental refugees
  shares the same challenges as other research on
  vulnerability
• To add more dense meaning to concepts borrowed
  from non-scientific discourse and to connect them
  to wider theoretical frameworks
• (Hogan 2002 176, in Hogan and Marandola Jr
  (2005), Towards an interdiscplinary
  conceptualisation of vulnerability, Population,
  Space and Place 11, 455-71.)
• Yet borderland signifies overlapping ideas,
  theories, methodologies on which in-depth,
  bilateral and sustained interaction may be
  possible

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4. Approaches to understanding geography of
vulnerability
Weak
Spatial context
Strong
Power
Weak
Strong
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4. Context and power/knowledge

• A relational perspective leads to interesting
  questions about environmental refugees is the
  Myers-Black debate a false dichotomy?
• Who constructs environmental refugees as
  vulnerable or a problem and why? Might
  mobility not be a sign of resilience?
• Should there be a search for policies that see
  environmentally-led mobility as a potential
  win-win situation for movers and sending and
  receiving areas?

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Summary

• Sympathy for Blacks concerns about
  environmentally-led migration as often local and
  multi-causal
• Nevertheless mapping spaces of population
  vulnerability to climate change holds potential
  for active policy intervention
• This must not mean excluding a relational
  perspective that questions why some seek to
  benefit from the construction of an
  environmental refugee category while others
  resist it
• Population geographers who recognise that
  mobility is a long-established livelihood
  strategy (often related to the environment) are
  well-placed to argue for a more positive policy
  framework, based on an appreciation of the wider
  context of such moves (interacting physical
  spaces, social relations and relational
  geographies)