This article is part of a series from Migration Studies graduate students at The University of San Francisco. This article analyzes the implications of environmental displacement. Other articles in the series discuss migration from legal, historical, and communal perspectives.
Our Current Models Don’t Address Environmental Displacement
We are at a crossroads in our humanity. We are simultaneously laying waste to the environment and further restricting people’s ability to escape environmental collapse. As the Earth gets hotter and hotter, we will experience shocks- stronger more frequent storms, droughts, wildfires- and stressors- rising sea levels, coastal erosion, soil salinization- that will force individuals and communities to relocate for survival. The climate science language of shocks and stressors can even map onto our current understanding of migration.
“Temporary” environmental shocks like storms are used discursively in a similar manner to “temporary” migration patterns like labor, academic or tourism modes of migration. “Long term” or “permanent” environmental stressors like sea level rise are used in a similar notion as our ideas of migrants who “stay” such as refugees, asylum seekers, permanent residents and citizens. However the shock-stress dichotomy within migration is currently being rethought and phased out for a more holistic understanding that includes mixed motivations as a premise for understanding migration. Though popular media and politicians worldwide tend to stick to the migrant-refugee binary, there is a need to rethink our understandings of migratory movements and displacement in a human centered approach. This emphasis is all the more necessary when we discuss the impact that climate change will have on humans. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) finds that the most vulnerable communities including the poor, racial and ethnic minorities and indigenous communities are at the highest risk for loss of land, culture and life. These vulnerable communities too are not necessarily comprising our current understanding of early or preemptive migration due to the financial implications. These communities are often displaced, forcibly or otherwise, as a final measure or response to economic, militaristic or environmental push factors. More to the point, climate change and how it will overwhelmingly negatively impact vulnerable communities will at the same time be a global issue regardless of identity and status. Without a clear understanding of how communities will react and make decisions, the current humanitarian migration crisis will be nothing compared to what is in our near future.
To understand the current issues facing global migration in general and refugee movements in particular, it’s important to look at the original framework for refugees. By analyzing the original documents and theories, we can discuss whether or not the solutions provided then for a specific problem created too narrow of a framework that may be contributing to our current issues. The 1951 Convention on Refugees established an international definition for refugees in order to provide a legal framework specifically for displacement following World War II. The 1967 Protocol on Refugees would expand the 1951 convention to a universal and atemporal standard that recognized the 1951 definition was potentially applicable to many events. The definition itself placed the determining refugee and asylum status on a perception of persecution based on inherent identifying factors and political affiliations. Importantly these documents provided the indisputable international recognition that all individuals everywhere have the right to seek asylum. These definition have been the standard for states to craft their own guidelines since 1967. Some bilateral and regional agreements have attempted to expand what persecution means or to address the major gap that overlooks internally displaced persons, but for the most part the 1951 and 1967 agreements are the documents that guide state policy for refugee and asylum purposes. In fact the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) most recent publication of its Handbook and Guidelines is more or less a guidebook for defining words within the 1951 and 1967 definition. Importantly these guidelines (let alone any other international agreement) do not address environmental displacement. Several international agencies have attempted to address the human impact of climate change including the UNHCR and the International Organization of Migration (IOM) at least in defining the class of protection, but there aren’t any areas to look for legal relief. Model’s like the United State’s Temporary Protected Status (TPS) attempt to address disaster and shock relief after a storm or earthquake, but these models are ill equipped to address the potential long term and permanent realities of displacement. This is currently playing out in the US as many migrants who have received TPS have recently lost protection or are at risk of losing protection. The logic being that the environmental disaster has been recovered does not square with the reality of the political and economic destitution that persists in many of these states long after disaster recovery. Further, to address the refugee and humanitarian model, this model was originally intended also as a quick fix, with the intention that refugees should return once the political situation has been resolved. However, the average stay in a refugee camp now exceeds 10 years, and more and more camps are beginning to look like cities within a gray area of political and economic sovereignty. Finally, within the current framework that second or third party countries utilized to receive refugees and asylum seekers, there is almost always a path to citizenship for these vulnerable populations.
With the inadequacies of the refugee models in mind let’s look at the current context. The UNHCR estimates there are currently 68.5 million displaced people worldwide- 40 million are displaced internally, 25.4 million are refugees and 3.1 million are asylum seekers. The global south receives and hosts 85% of these populations displaced externally. These receiving states in the global south are utilizing innovative human centered solutions. Uganda for example has taken an approach that focuses on economic, political and cultural inclusion for displaced persons, by providing a stabilizing income and housing in order for displaced persons to quicker enmesh in and participate in society. The Uganda model has been very successful and avoids many of the political pitfalls of the camp model while addressing an individual’s humanity and dignity. This is not to suggest that the camp model does not provide benefits; at the very least meeting needs for safety, shelter and food are pros of the camp model. The model is however lacking in its medium to long term effectiveness the way the Uganda model does.
Addressing the Policy Gaps
Since we’re discussing two high politically charged issues that need to be addressed- climate change and migration- we should look at how to best approach a human centered solution to the ways in which these problems intersect. There are several approaches but three more self evident routes- 1) address climate change and migration simultaneously, 2) prioritize addressing climate change to lessen the potential for displacement and 3) prioritize addressing international migration due to its immediacy. Let’s look at the pros and cons of each potential approach.
1) Tackling climate change and opening up avenues for safe and legitimate migration simultaneously would be a major accomplishment for the international community. This however is most likely not feasible at the moment. Two of the largest voices, the United States and The European Union are currently engaged in regressive debates on migration, and the United States is abdicating its role as a global leader in the climate change sphere. This is not to say that leadership from other states should be overlooked. In fact, we should be looking to impacted states for the leadership if we were to tackle both issues simultaneously. The experiences of sending states, states at high risk for environmental impact, receiving global south states and the “new” hegemonic powers India and China (both new major polluters) will all have to play significant leadership roles in these arenas. Without their voices and experiences, any international consensus will not be sustainable and lack foresight in similar fashions that are prompting the current rethinking of displacement and industrialization. Leadership from these states could develop innovations or fill gaps from previous diplomacy. For example, if the international community were to attempt to address both issues, impacted states could utilize the international consensus and logic within the Paris Agreement. The Paris Agreement was negotiated with care and represented the overwhelming understanding that there are climate issues that need to be addressed by the entire global community. That breadth of consensus could be the opening for a protocol or an amendment to the Paris Agreement that specifically addresses migration and environmental displacement. Currently, however, the Paris Agreement is non binding and there are no accountability measures. Expanding the Paris Agreement with the context of addressing migration due to environmental displacement would most likely require some level of accountability. This could hinder any potential diplomacy. Whether we want our international diplomacy dictated by a militaristic hegemonic power is a different discussion. To that point, within the migration discussions, there are frameworks for the Global Compact for Migration and the Global Compact on Refugees. As these compacts are currently under negotiation, language specifically surrounding the mixed motivations of migrants and climate change’s influence on those motivations could be a guideline. A similar but different hold up would center around whether or not the international diplomacy model is really a route worth pursuing. These two compacts, like the Paris Agreement, are both non binding.
2) Prioritizing mitigating climate change and reducing environmental degradation is an interesting route. This angle would make the assumption of addressing climate change as a “cause” for displacement, which fits the current model that views migration as an adaptation measure as areas and states become inhabitable. Further the recent IPCC report on 1.5°C global temperature increase essentially set a deadline for reducing greenhouse gas emissions within 12 years. Not meeting reduction targets will be catastrophic for the earth, and we can expect mass migration movements as sea levels rise, droughts become more frequent, storms grow stronger and temperatures rise to deadlier heights. Granted there’s a “deadline” and as mentioned above the Paris Agreement hints at global consensus, but the international community is currently not on track to meet greenhouse gas emission reduction targets. Without a massive overhaul of the global economic order, a climate change focus might be a long shot, and we could end up overlooking the immediacy of population displacement. And unless the conversation shifts to rethinking the use of nuclear energy as a transition technology, reductions in greenhouse gasses will be negotiated and determined at the will of the biggest corporate and state polluters.
3) Since migration analysis is moving away from a binary understanding of migration in a vacuum that attempts to pinpoint an overarching push factor, approach three is probably our most human centered approach. On top of addressing future population displacement, this approach would address human movement and provide relief immediately for populations that are currently displaced. That said, prioritizing international migration will not be easy. Getting there we would have to move away from the migrant-refugee binary. This would need to happen at the supranational level, in regional and bilateral agreements and through state specific policies. The inadequacies of the current binary are already apparent when surveying the disparate refugee, asylum and migration schemes across the international community. For example, states decide how to prioritize industries that might need migrant workers on a skill spectrum for labor visas; at the same time states are often inclined to attract university students with lax student visa standards since these students may not qualify for financial assistance and therefore pay higher fees. On the refugee/asylum end of the binary, displaced persons have access to a huge variety of potential social benefits or work authorizations once they have been received. Access to services and potential jobs are part of the mixed motivation understanding of migration, and squaring this with our understanding of displacement will help us address a more realistic global migration and/or displacement regime. Bringing a new understanding in line with common sense migration could take the form of international protections through models like the Convention Against Torture or the Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Their Families. Ultimately, to best serve the elastic nature of environmental displacement an earnest discussion on opening borders and reducing limitations to visas and refugee and asylum protections is needed.
The Implications of Getting Environmental Displacement Wrong
To highlight the need to address environmental displacement, we can look at Bangladesh. Due to a combination of geography, relative poverty, high population density, lack of infrastructure and inhospitable regional neighbors, Bangladesh is poised to be utterly devastated by climate change. Along with the club of small island states, there is a high possibility Bangladesh will be among the first “climate victims” becoming totally uninhabitable. And in Bangladesh significant sea level rise alone has the potential to displace 30 million people- a 50% increase of the current global total.
We can expect that Bangladesh will experience both flooding and coastal inundation due to sea level rise as well as an influx of refugees due to the current ethnic cleansing campaign in neighboring Myanmar. Sea level rise, and coastal flooding due to storms effects 40% of southern Bangladesh, and this region is also where the major Rohingya mega-settlement in Cox’s Bazar, currently shelters over 602,000 refugees. This settlement appeared seemingly overnight when the conflict accelerated in August 2017, and the Bangladeshi government and international agencies have been working around the clock to prevent an “emergency within the emergency” since the mega-settlement was hastily built and is already in an area prone to climate destruction. On top of the shock of the cross-border crisis, Bangladeshis are already attempting to figure out seasonal internal migration and are planning for potential long-term resettlement.
Farmers have already begun to adjust crop planting and harvesting to cope with the increasing flooding and earlier storm seasons, and this has seemed to prove a decent mitigation technique, so far. However, with the constant, more frequent and more intense flooding, soil salinization is proving to be the biggest potential motivator for permanent internal or international migration, and the poor quality of the soil is worsening crop yields and lowering economic viability, even with the shift in harvesting. Bangladesh does have a minor migration culture- primarily internal and with storm season, but the jump to an international migration culture or scheme could prove difficult. The potential international migration scenario has already been accounted for by at least one of Bangladesh’s major neighbors and potential receiving state, India. Securitization and border militarization will only increase as environmentally displaced migration increases. To this point, in an attempt to stem a potential future environmental displacement potential, much like the one Bangladesh is preparing for, India has pushed border militarization to an unfortunate conclusion, and the Indian government has allegedly established shoot to kill policies at the Bangladeshi border making it one of the deadliest most hostile borders in the world.
The Bangladesh case brings up several important points in the discussion on climate change and displacement. As is the case with most migration movements, internal migration will be the first response to climate related stress. Traditional economic migration is also generally internal before international typically occurring through urbanization as industry moves from agriculture to city based enterprises. On an economic level this wouldn’t necessarily give cause for concern. As states urbanize there may be lingering questions about the sustainability and livelihoods of rural populations, but the internal movement is typically interrelated to economic growth. This isn’t necessarily true for internal migration caused by climate change. For example, if the internal migration, as noted in the case of Bangladeshi farmers adjusting harvesting, is constant and on such a large scale without related economic growth how could this constant movement be sustainable? The climate lexicon can further highlight why internal environmental migration should be addressed at a supranational level. The shocks and stressors binary is a familiar one when we think of international aid and relief. When a large population is displaced following a shock like a major storm or earthquake, there is often an international aid response to help stabilize the state and the region. An environmental stressor like sea level rise or soil salinization doesn’t have a clear urgency and doesn’t illicit an international response. The displacement however from stressors may displace more people over longer time frames. This again can be tied back to the migrant-refugee binary. Whereas decades long shifts in migration schemes that follow industry or other “slower” factors may not bring about a domestic or international discussion, a shock like a civil war typically attracts immediate international attention.
Following internal stress, folks will have to migrate across borders. If there are land borders there is a high chance of militarization. Todd Miller posits that climate change is already leading to a massive increase in securitization and militarization, and that states will continue to increase “border enforcement” at higher and deadlier costs. In the security realm, climate change is considered a “threat multiplier,” and the US military is already assessing how potential shocks and stressors might destabilize international regions as well as assessing domestically how best to shore up or relocate bases. Within the “threat multiplier” school of thought, there have been retrospectives and studies analyzing the Arab Spring from the context of climate change looking at how one of the major contributors to our current “refugee crisis” was potentially directly related to droughts, crop failures and food shortages. Much more recently we can see how the Carvana from Central America is directly linked to climate change where the story follows the same prediction for Bangladesh. In Honduras crop failures caused a massive internal migration, a weak state could not accommodate and financially support the rapid urbanization, high urban unemployment led to a rise in the informal economy and eventually the growth of gangs and violence further deteriorated the state. The exodus of asylum seekers is now met with violence in Mexico and at the US border. If this scenario plays out in Bangladesh the way it is playing out in the Americas with 30 million people displaced, it will catastrophically destabilize the region. As noted above, Bangladesh’s neighbors are already preparing for a potential border conflict and any cross border movements are likely to turn violent.
Finally, Bangladesh provides another important discussion on the potential snowball factor of cross border displacement. Bangladesh attempted to repatriate the population in direct violation of international non-refoulement norms that prohibit returning people to the places where they are persecuted. Walking back this decision by finding that none of the Rohingya wanted to be returned, Bangladesh dropped the plan, but, following elections next year, a different Bangladeshi government could take up this position. Noted above, the Rohingya population that fled ethnic cleansing into southern Bangladesh is an extremely vulnerable population in a region vulnerable to storms and sea surges. Now this is an important scenario to think through, because it will become much more normal. If Bangladesh can’t (and shouldn’t) return Rohingya to Myanmar due to concerns of violence and persecution, but the area where the Rohingya have settled is highly vulnerable to environmental disaster, what should be done? This dilemma is the heart of environmental displacement and migration. The “emergency within the emergency” is all the more tragic when we think of how military states are thinking in terms “threat multipliers”. What threat can people fleeing violence and persecution, seeking stable food supplies or trying to find stable dry land for shelter possibly pose? The reality that “traditional” displacement and cross border movements are already heavily politicized coupled with the reality that military states are already preparing for environmental displacement should highlight the urgency for getting this issue right.
Environmental displacement and migration is the most important issue for the global community. Politicians around the world are already latching onto migration and refugee movements to fire up protectionism and racist fear mongering. Refocusing our understanding of how migration has been politicised in the context of how many more individuals, communities and whole states will need to migrate due to climate change and it is clear how unprepared we are. Environmental displacements will further highlight the illegitimacy of borders and nation states. Conflict and violence will grow at borders, but between which actors representing which interests? How is a state defined if migrants from several Central American countries are being abused in Mexico by the US government? If Bangladesh is unprepared to support farmers as their crops fail, how could they possibly support the Rohingya who fled a country that doesn’t recognize them as part of Myanmar? The proposition to do away with borders was briefly stated above, but it is ultimately at the core of discussions for both migration and climate change. Corporations and states do not pollute endemically. Their abuse of the planet is felt globally and the most vulnerable amongst us will suffer disproportionately and these populations will seek a better alternative. The adage that “we are here because you were there” is true of colonialism and imperialism in a similar way that is is true of capitalism and industrialization.
