Environmental change and involuntary migration. General considerations

The social consequences of the environmental processes under scrutiny are one of the greatest challenges the international community will face in the coming years. Today, the effects of long-standing environmental changes seem obvious to many citizens of our planet. Desertification, increasing soil salinity, wasteful deforestation, and rising sea levels are just a few of the issues discussed below which influence everyday life for at least two hundred million people worldwide.

A particularly important problem is the lack of access to safe drinking water. According to WHO estimates, over 1,3 billion inhabitants of our globe currently do not have access to potable water. More than 2,2 million people in developing countries (most of them children) die each year from diseases associated with water shortage, poor hygiene and inadequate sanitation. According to the United Nations Development Report (2006) nearly half of the whole population in developing countries suffers at any given time from health problems caused by drought, water and sanitation deficits. The drought, disaster, and famine are, next to epidemic disease, the most common (and increasing) causes of mortality in many African countries. The rapidity of environmental changes, which currently take place in many areas of the world, precludes adaptation of millions of people to shifting conditions in their surroundings. This constitutes a key factor in the decision to migrate.

The natural disasters observed in recent years entail serious social consequences. Floods, earthquakes (and the tsunami waves that frequently accompany them), volcanic eruptions, and the effects of hurricanes, cyclones, and tornadoes force several million people each year to relocate. According to the Norwegian Refugee Council about 36 million people had to flee because of natural disasters in 2008, more than 16 million in 2009 and finally about 42 million in 2010. Over the last decade, we have witnessed at least ten major disasters which had a significant long-term impact on the dynamics of long-lasting displacement. According to the estimates of international organisations, more than 1,7 million people were forced to relocate following the tsunami of December 2004. As a result of the raging Hurricane “Katrina” over the Gulf of Mexico in August 2005, over 300,000 people were displaced, while the disaster caused losses estimated at over 86 billion dollars. More than 1,5 million people have been displaced in the aftermath of destructive 8.8 magnitude earthquake in Chile (February 2010). Last year's earthquake in Haiti has deprived more than 1 million residents of homes (other data suggest as much as 1,8 million). Furthermore, Japan's March 2011 earthquake, with its magnitude over 9 and accompanying tsunami wave with its complicated repercussions, will probably have a significant impact on the dynamics of internal migration for Japanese nationals. According to the United Nations, a total of 590,000 were evacuated or displaced as a result of the quake and tsunami disaster, including more than 100,000 children. Another common cause of internal displacement, although rather underestimated in the literature, is the result of massive flooding, which occurs almost every year in the most populated Asian countries (Pakistan, China, India, Bangladesh and Vietnam). The foregoing examples represent only a small sample of the phenomenon of environmentally-induced displacement. Recalling them, however, helps us to grasp the importance of great natural disasters for significant spontaneous population exoduses. Watching television reports from areas devastated by natural disasters, we often do not realize the many subtle effects the local communities will have to deal with; demographic, social, economic, and health-related consequences of major natural disasters can be visible and palpable years after the imminent threat is gone.

In a sense, the implications of environmental hazards are affecting all of us, whether or not we are aware of it. The threats monitored in recent years call for far-reaching research on the relationship between environmental change, natural disasters, and human migration. Sudden disasters, as well as gradual environmental problems become increasingly important security issue. An intensification of research on environmentally-induced displacement may also be associated with a nexus of other migratory topics. It seems particularly relevant at this point to highlight changes in the way global migration looks in the last decades.

Over most of the last century, population movements remained primarily a political phenomenon. Migration research, like security studies in the late eighties, becomes less and less dependent on the dynamics of international armed conflicts and the cateogry of ethnicity. Acting as a corollary to these vital transformations is an observable economisation of the migration process. Economic motivations now appear the most common reason for the decision to change one's place of residence. An important complement to these processes is the feminisation of global mobility, and an at least partial deterritorialisation of migration movements (the separation of a person's spatial mobility from the previously rigid and static categories of space and time). From the perspective applied here, it is time to study somewhat different phenomenon that seems to be particularly significant today: the environmentalisation of contemporary human migrations.

Environmentally-induced displacement currently constitute important condition for forced mobility within national borders. Environmentally-induced displacement of an international character still remains a small and limited phenomenon (in statu nascendi). Particularly high transnational migration potential is characterized by two phenomena: sudden natural disasters (floods, earthquakes, ) and the consequence of long-term environmental processes (land degradation, desertification, deforestation, ect.). Instead, this particular category of displacement appears to be taking place largely inside the confines of a given nation-state. This did not prevent the issue of environmental migrations from becoming, recently, an important locus of international cooperation. The activity of international institutions is increasingly influenced by issues which, for many years, were within an exclusive competence of state authorities. The emergence of certain global environmental processes (such as desertification, greenhouse gases emission, ozone depletion or rising sea levels caused by melting glaciers) prompts the international community to take common and coordinated actions.

An important prerequisite for such activity seems to be the modern focus on the development of international human rights protection. The situation of many communities living within national borders (various minority groups, indigenous peoples, internally displaced people, and even domestic migrants) has become a growing concern for the international community. Regarded until now as impinging on the undisputed sovereignty of the state, conservation and aid efforts (ranging from humanitarian assistance to human rights interventions) are practices which are at the same time generally accepted and widely used by many international bodies.

The aid on behalf of internally displaced persons (including environmentally displaced people) maintained by the international community commenced in the mid 1990s. The first document in this regard was Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement, adopted in 1998. The document had no binding force; rather, it was a kind of résumé of the postulated framework of rules concerning the humanitarian aspects of the treatment of internally displaced persons. According to many observers increasing acceptance for the document throughout the world may lead in the future to turn its declarative provisions into customary international law. As Walter Kälin noted, several countries including Liberia, Uganda, Angola, Peru and Turkey, have made references to this commonly accepted declaration of principles (soft law document). Khalid Koser in the recently published article, describe the challenges facing countries in the transformation of the Guiding Principles from “soft” to “hard” law. As professor Jane McAdam suggested, Guiding Principles may serve as an “interim model” for the EDPs protection “until a more comprehensive solution is found”. The first binding document on assisting internally displaced people was the Convention of Kampala (2009), established within the African Union (AU) and already ratified by eleven AU member states. This regulation, adopted by the UN, does not distinguish any specific categories of displacees from the generally understood group of internally displaced persons. In fact the document mentions conflict, environment and development as the sole factors of potential displacement. However, given the diverse nature of forced mobility, it seems reasonable to differentiate at least four basic categories of forced internal displacement: “conflict-induced displacement”, “environmentally-induced displacement”, “disaster-induced displacement” and “development-induced displacement”. Thus, there are at least four basic types of internally displaced persons.

It should be noted that not all migratory movements caused by environmental factors are of an involuntary character. It seems important to take into consideration, within the ongoing analysis, the general division of such migrations into the categories of “voluntary” and “forced”. This binary typology is quite crucial (and often underestimated in the literature). The lack of any detailed account of situational factors (as well as of the scale of the threats that affect potential migrants) can lead to absurd conclusions and generalizations – for example, an “environmentally-induced migrant” might refer just as easily to a person who has lost an entire life work in a fire or who is fleeing the spectre of famine, as it might concern a wealthy businessperson moving from the UK to the Bahamas because of the good weather there all year-round. For this reason, it is much better to separate two categories of people: environmental migrants (for whom relocation not always means the occurrence of a specific hazard or considerable deterioration of living conditions) and environmentally displaced people (undertaking forced migration due to the presence of a serious threat to their normal functioning).

Minimizing the negative effects of environmental hazards represents a source of concern and a measure of responsibility both to each citizen individually and to the international community collectively. The growing impact of environmental change upon the daily lives of the inhabitants of particular regions, countries, and even entire continents is currently a major challenge for many sectors of international cooperation. Political cooperation undertaken in this area should be supplemented by the formation of appropriate standards for public international law. To build effective institutional and regulatory forms of assistance, and to make at least a slight modification in the current perception of the environmental factors of forced migration on the basis of public international law and multilateral institutions seems of particular importance nowadays. The negative consequences of environmental changes are already, in many regions of the world, a main factor forcing millions of people to abandon their current places of residence. Only by anticipating the imminent problems stemming from environmental disruptions can we protect ourselves against the most severe consequences in the near and distant future.

Given the nature of contemporary forced environmental migration, and the risks and problems affecting its participants, it seems better to perceive it as a fully autonomous form of human spatial mobility. Its sense is decisively different, as it remains separate from all of the currently observed migratory movements taking place within state borders. In other words, the consequences of armed conflicts (as typically understood in the case of internal displacement) are not a determinant factor in claiming that migration stems from the effects of human interference with the geographical environment (as in the case of development-induced displacement), or from various motivations of an economic nature (as in the case of migrant workers). Environmentally displaced people are affected by radically different problems and threats than the representatives of the other above-mentioned categories of migrants (migrant workers, international refugees, conflict-induced displaced people). That is, not only the reasons for migration, but also its nature, course, and consequences all seem to differ. The reverse may affect environmentally displaced people as well; they usually do not fall victim to armed conflict, nor, especially, does their situation constitute a substantial bargaining card in political disputes. Yet, while environmentally conditioned displacement tend to be far less spectacular than internal displacement that results from armed conflict, mass displacement, or the construction of large dams, still, in many regions of the world, their scale greatly exceeds other forms of spatial mobility within state borders. The study on relations and differences occurring between mentioned types of displacement should be based on a broad analysis of two elements: coercion and risk.

The specific location of environmental displacees as a separate category of internally displaced persons has not yet been reflected in the wording of the international documents analyzed within the scope of this work. Both the Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement and the recently adopted Kampala Convention do not capture environmentally displaced people as a distinct and specific actor in migration processes. However, many experts begin to notice the need for full autonomy of environmental refugees (environmentally displaced people) that could play a role of the normative and institutionally advanced plane of international human rights protection. The environmental migrants will likely be subject to progressive autonomy in the overall context of the protection of internally displaced persons.

The Guiding Principles defines IDPs in a very broad, general and indeterminate way as “persons or groups of persons who have been forced or obliged to flee or to leave their homes or places of habitual residence, in particular as a result of or in order to avoid the effects of armed conflict, situations of generalized violence, violations of human rights or natural or man-made disasters, and who have not crossed an internationally recognized State border” (see paragraph 2). The definition is strongly determined by UNHCR's IDP framework (see following pages). However, as Angela Williams pointed out, the IDP framework may be better solution than traditional refugee umbrella determined by the Geneva Convention of 1951. Moreover, in the content of Guiding Principles there are no clear references to the term 'environmentally-induced displacement' mentioned by UNHCR three years earlier. The text contains no references to the terms “environment” or “climate”, however, the word “disaster” is used three times (Introduction, Principle 6 (d), Principle 7 (3)). The document refers only in a general way to all important factors of internal displacement (conflict, natural or man-made disasters and development).

The Pact on Security, Stability and Development in the Great Lakes Region (so-called Great Lakes Pact) adopted in December 2006 by 11 states was the first attempt to protect internally displaced people in this particularly affected area. The document mentions four categories of factors shaping the regional scale of internal displacement: political conflicts, humanitarian, social and environmental catastrophes. According to the article 20 (b) State Parties undertake actions to “promote relevant policies to guarantee access to basic social services by the populations affected by conflicts and effects of natural disasters”.

The Convention for the Protection and Assistance of Internally Displaced Persons in Africa (commonly known as the Kampala Convention) was adopted in October 2009. The document has to be ratified by 15 out of 53 African Union countries to enter into force. As the preamble of the AU convention states: “Member States are determined to preventing and putting an end to the phenomenon of internal displacement [...] especially persistent and recurrent conflicts as well as addressing displacement caused by natural disasters, which have a devastating impact on human life, peace, stability, security, and development”. The analyses of environment-degradation-displacement relations, contained in the document are in fact much more detailed and exhaustive. The definitions of IDPs in the Guiding Principles, Great Lakes Pact of 2006 and Kampala Convention of 2009 to large extent converge. According to the document State Parties shall: a) take measures to protect and assist IDPs due to natural or man-made disasters, including climate change, b) be liable to make reparation to IDPs for damage when a State Party refrains from protecting and assisting IDPs in the event of natural disasters, c) adopt measures to prevent and put an end to the phenomenon such as displacement caused by natural and man-made disasters.

The problem of environmentally-induced displacement in public international law is shaped through the activities of international institutions: initially only those associated with the UN system, currently also regional ones. However, international law is rigid and international institutions are working too slowly and not always adequately to the needs and dynamics of the threats that appear in many places of the world.

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Articles by Bogumil Terminski