Environmental concerns and international migration

Abstract

"This article focuses on international migration occurring as a result of environmental changes and processes. It briefly reviews attempts to conceptualize environment-related migration and then considers the extent to which environmental factors have been and may be significant in initiating migration. Following is an examination of migration as an independent variable in the migration-environment relationship. Finally, ethical and policy dimensions are addressed."

PIP: According to Nobel, the definition of the contemporary refugee has been modified by the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) to include well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons mentioned in the Geneva Convention as well as external aggression, occupation, foreign domination, and massive human rights violations. Additionally, Olson's definition includes physical dangers (floods, volcanic eruptions) and economic insufficiency (drought, famine). The term environmental refugee has gained wide usage lately. Richmond's model recognizes the predisposing factors: the nature of the biophysical environment, structural constraints, facilitating factors, precipitating events, and the feedback effects of the environmentally induced migration. As to environmental factors as a cause of migration, a global survey of natural disasters for the period of 1947-1980 indicated that the overall number of disasters is increasing and 86% of the lives lost occurred in Asia. China and India dominated in the number of environmental refugees during 1976-1994. Furthermore, the droughts of 1968-73 and 1982-84 led to millions of environmental refugees in Africa. There were 1 million environmental refugees in Burkina Faso alone. The precipitating events and conditions were population growth, widespread poverty, food production efforts, loosened regulations, lacking environmental legislation, and climate change. The bulk of refugees move within the national boundaries, but there has been an increasing trend of South-North international migration in the last decade and the emergence of an international immigration industry. The environmental impacts of international migration has surfaced in Australia because of detrimental effects on the national ecology, but resource management policies could handle environmental concerns. Ethical and policy implications mean that much of contemporary environmental degradation in developing countries are rooted in colonial expansion and the problem will require a global solution.