Memorandum submitted by The New Economics
Foundation
The New Economics Foundation is the leading
independent think tank involved in the development of a fairer
and more sustainable economy. Founded in 1986, it is now one of
Britain's most creative and independent think tanks, combining
research, policy, training and practical action. Now the UK home
of the international Jubilee debt campaign, NEF has a wide programme
of work on economic globalization ranging from corporate accountability
to climate change.
THE CASE
FOR ENVIRONMENTAL
REFUGEES
BACKGROUND
Global warming, more than war or political upheaval,
stands to displace many millions of people over the next 50 years.
So far little has been done at the official level in the international
community to prepare for what now appears to be inevitability.
Governments and the specialized United Nations agencies, already
faced with numerous humanitarian crises, do not seem willing to
tackle the problem. The only people facing up to the challenge
are the people who cannot escape it, namely the governments of
small, low, lying island nations like Tuvalu. These people, along
with who four other small island states are the first to face
the prospect of national extinction. Many other states, like Bangladesh
have large, heavily populated areas also under threat.
The spectre of wholesale relocation of populations
raises fundamental questions about citizenhood and nationality.
Once land has been lost, will a residual nationality be able to
persist, or does there need to be a new category of "world
citizen"? Could such a status be created in acknowledgement
of the fact that climate change is a collective problem and requires
a collective solution? In the event of full-scale national evacuation,
what happens to an abandoned country's exclusive economic zone,
its territorial waters and nationhood? Few things could be more
sensitive than carving out new territory to create space for a
nation.
Environmental refugees are already here. Problems
like climate change mean they will grow in number. The choice
is now between managing the problem and providing protection to
people forced to flee through no fault of their own, or incipient,
rising international chaos.
HISTORY AND
CONTEXT
The direct demands of the global economy for
cheap mobile labour are pushing the movement of people across
borders, and migrant labour in the UK has increased by 44% in
the last seven years. Estimates suggest that at present approximately
170 million people have left the country of their birth. Within
Europe alone migrants make up around 20 million of the population.
Some of these people are part of "managed" migration
flows—skilled workers moving from job to job. But many more
are those who have no choice but to escape in order to save their
lives.
The vast majority of global population movements
take place between developing countries. Many of the world's poorest
countries have to face huge refugee movements (and in some places
semi-permanent refugee camps) as populations flee civil wars and
natural disasters in their own countries. For although international
travel is cheaper and more accessible than at any other time in
history, the cost of a plane or train ticket is still well beyond
the reach of the majority of the world's population.
People displaced for environmental reasons are
starting to feature significantly on the social and political
radar. Dr Norman Myers of Oxford University estimates that by
2050 up to 150 million people may be displaced by the impacts
of global warming, such as sea level rise—which would equate
to 1.5% of 2050s predicted global population of 10 billion.
The Geneva Convention, conceived and written
to cope with the demands of post-war Europe, now needs to be expanded
to incorporate a category of "environmental persecution",
to cope with this reality. This is a controversial issue amongst
followers of the migration and refugee debate. The United Nations
High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) has consistently rejected
the case for categorizing the environment as a cause for refugee
status—arguing that they must concentrate their limited
resources on those who are fleeing political, religious or other
sorts of ideological persecution.
There are more generalized anxieties about global
population movements—not least expressed by many in the
environmental movement. At a time when there are attempts to get
issues such as greener urban living on the agenda, the media and
political hype around "floods" of asylum seekers to
western Europe and the United states causes concern about housing,
jobs and the overheating, in terms of space and quality of life,
of local communities. However, there are many myths about the
numbers of asylum seekers taken in by the UK. According to the
Refugee Council:
"Even within the EU, the UK ranked 10th
in terms of asylum applications in relation to the overall population
in 2001. The truth about refugee movements is the world's poorest
countries both produce and bear responsibility for most refugees.
During 1992-2001, 86% of the world's estimated 12 million refugees
originated from developing countries, whilst such countries provided
asylum to 72 per cent of the global population (source: UNHCR).
If you consider global refugee and asylum seeking populations
in relation to the host country's size, population and wealth,
the UK ranks 32nd. Taking the greatest burden are Iran, Burundi
and Guinea."
Migration needs to be carefully managed—so
that certain parts of the UK are not taking more than their fair
share of incomers. But the issue should not be conflated with
a debate about the overstretched nature of public services that
is more due to many years of under funding and not numbers of
service users.
Quality of life issues are now a global concern.
Western Europe and the US cannot continue to consume with impunity—and
assume that they are not impacting on the local and global environment
around them. This means an historic act of facing up to the real
cost of our lifestyle.
CURRENT LEGISLATION
Refugees are currently defined and protected
under the Geneva Convention of 1951. The Geneva Convention was
first adopted after World War II to deal with the vast numbers
of people displaced by the war.
The Convention defined a refugee as someone
who held a "well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons
of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social
group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality
and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself
of the protection of that country; or who, not having a nationality
and being outside the country of his former habitual residence
as a result of such events, is unable, or, owing to such fear,
is unwilling to return to it."
Environmental reasons for granting refugee status
are not currently listed in the Convention, and there is resistance
to categorizing refugees on these grounds. That is for many reasons.
When it comes to internal displacement issues, populations should
in theory be able to appeal to their own government. If that government
fails in its duty of care to its citizens—that is when international
agencies such as the United Nations High Commission for Refugees
(UNHCR) must intervene. But, the UNHCR argues, primarily people
displaced for reasons of environmental degradation will be able
to move within their home country.
The similarity between environmental refugees
and other asylum seekers is in the forced nature of their movement.
But the UNHCR has very limited resources with which to protect
refugees—and has promoted the wide view that it wishes to
continue to work within the defined remit of the United Nations.
The problem with this argument is that many
environmental problems are international in creation. Therefore
to put the burden of responsibility on national governments to
cope with the additional costs of internal displacement, even
assuming that there is somewhere for them to be displaced to,
fails to acknowledge the responsibility of polluters.
However, the United Nations is not quite so
monolithic on this issue as might at first sight appear. A report
by Essam El Hinnawi for the United Nations Environment Programme
produced in 1985 did suggest that there was a category of persons
"who have been forced to leave their traditional habitat
. . . because of a marked environmental disruption . . . that
jeopardized their existence and/or seriously affected the quality
of their life." (UNEP: Nairobi, 1985, 4)
The definition he produced, with its categories
of temporarily displaced (by an earthquake or volcano for example),
and those permanently displaced by either changes to habitat such
as dam building or permanent environmental degradation, have become
the key categorisations of the debate on environmental refugees.
THE ENVIRONMENTAL
DRIVERS OF
DISPLACEMENT
The Pacific Island nation of Tuvalu is no more
than a few metres above sea level at their highest point. People
who have become adept at living in a fragile and changeable environment
have inhabited the islands for about 2000 years. But recent changes
to the global climate have undermined their way of life.
In the year 2000, the anticipated floods that
Tuvalu has every year lasted for five consecutive months. This
tiny nation faces huge threats from a range of impacts due to
global warming, ranging from extreme weather events, to droughts
and rising sea levels. It means the population has to consider
a phased relocation of its population to neighbouring countries.
In March 2002 Tuvalu's Prime Minister, Koloa Talake, announced
he was considering legal action against the world's worst polluters—the
nations most responsible for carbon dioxide emissions—at
the International Court of Justice.
Climate change is also having an effect on the
predictability and frequency of storms and cyclones. Since the
1970s warmer conditions have resulted in a greater incidence of
cyclones, especially over the western tropical Pacific. As levels
of carbon dioxide increase in the atmosphere it is also anticipated
that the intensity of cyclones will increase—with wind speeds
potentially 10-20% higher than previously.
Weather-related disasters are making life impossible
to sustain for many communities. It is not just weather extremes
however, that force people from their home territories. "Natural"
disasters and the effects of resource stripping have forced countless
people to migrate—one leading Oxford University analyst
estimates that currently 25 million people worldwide have been
uprooted for environmental reasons—exceeding the 22 million
refugees who have fled from war and other persecutions.
Globally, the problems exemplified by Tuvalu
are expected to get worse. According to the World Meteorological
Organization, 2001 was the second warmest year on record. Since
1976, the global average temperature has risen at a rate approximately
three times faster than the century's average. In 2001, the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the group of scientists that advises
international climate negotiations, produced their Third Assessment
Report (TAR). It projects that over the period 1990-2100 global
average surface temperature will climb at a rate without precedent
in the last 10,000 years. The result would be a rise in sea levels
of between 9 and 88 cms—a huge threat to island and coastal
living across the globe.
Coastal flooding not only erodes landmass, it
also soaks farmland with salty water, making it impossible to
grow crops, and can affect fresh drinking water supplies. Cities
such as Manila, Bangkok, Shanghai, Dhaka and Jakarta are already
at the risk of subsidence. On the Carteret atolls off the coast
of Papua New Guinea, rising seas have cut one island in half and
increased salt levels in the soil so much that fruit and vegetable
crops have been killed off. The atoll has about 1,500 residents—who
have been surviving on basic rations of sweet potatoes and rive
for the last two years. The Papuan government cannot afford to
re-locate these communities—and where would they re-locate
them?
The rise in sea levels is only one form of environmental
crisis created by climate change. The change in sea temperature
also creates problems for fragile marine environments such as
coral reefs—which have a knock-on effect on marine life,
crucial to local eco-systems and livelihoods based on fishing.
During the last "El Nino" of 1997-98, some 90% of live
reefs were affected. Drought is another consequence of global
warming, potentially affecting millions more. During 1997-98 droughts
destroyed Fiji's sugar cane crop, costing the government US$18
million.
Overall, according to the International Red
Cross and Red Crescent's World Disasters Report 2002, the numbers
of those killed by weather related disasters rose 21% from the
1970s to the 1990s. The numbers of those whose lives were affected
rose from 275,000 in the 1970s to 1.2 million in the 1980s to
18 million in the 1990s—a 65-fold increase. These statistics
incorporate those affected by things like cyclones, floods, landslides,
droughts and extremes of temperature.
CLIMATE REFUGEES[82]
Despite the predictions no global assessment
of the numbers likely to be displaced by a one-metre rise in sea
levels, or even a half-metre rise, has been made. Of the world's
19 mega-cities 16 are situated on coastlines. All but four are
in the developing world. The World Disasters Report points out
both the human and economic costs involved: "The most vulnerable
areas are found in the tropics, especially the west coast of Africa,
south Asia and south-east Asia, and low-lying coral atolls in
the Pacific and Indian Oceans. The nations hardest hit will be
those least able to afford coastal protection measures and where
inhabitants have nowhere else to go."
According to a 1998 report by the IPCC, Regional
Impacts of Climate Change:
— a one-metre rise in sea level would
inundate three million hectares in Bangladesh, displacing 15 to
20 million people.
— Viet Nam could lose 500,000 hectares
of land in the Red River Delta and another 2 million hectares
in the Mekong Delta, displacing roughly 10 million people.
— a one-metre rise would swamp about
85% of the Maldives' main island, which contains the capital Male.
It could turn most of the Maldives into sandbars, forcing 300,000
people to flee to India or Sri Lanka. "We would have no choice,"
said President Gayoom as long ago as 1989, "for the Maldives
would cease to exist as a nation."
— West Africa is at high risk. Up to
70% of the Nigerian coast would be inundated by a one-metre rise,
affecting more than 2.7 million hectares and pushing some beaches
three kilometres inland. Gambia's capital, Banjul, would be entirely
submerged.
— In the Mediterranean, Egypt would
lose at least two million hectares of land in the fertile Nile
Delta displacing 8-10 million people, including nearly the entire
population of Alexandria. The demise of this historic city would
cost the country over US$ 32 billion, close to one-third of annual
gross national product (GNP) in 1999.
— South American cities would suffer
some of the worst economic effects. A one-metre rise in sea level
would displace 600,000 people in Guyana—80% of the population
and cost US$ 4 billion, or 1,000 per cent of its tiny GNP.
As seas rise, coastal land in some regions is
sinking. Most large coastal cities have no plans to deal with
this. Manila, Bangkok, Shanghai, Dhaka and Jakarta are subsiding.
In Bangkok, rising sea levels would cost an
additional US$ 20 million per year in pumping costs alone. Costs
for relocating displaced squatter communities would be astronomical.
In Shanghai, up to a third of the city's 17 million inhabitants
would be flooded, displacing up to 6 million people. Singapore,
one city with a comprehensive planning culture, has nothing in
its latest 50-year master plan to deal with a one-metre sea-level
rise.
Governments can also work against the environmental
interests of their populations. For example, the Indian government
has undertaken major dam building projects, which have displaced
between 20 and 50 million people. Most of these people have been
from tribal groups—the Karjan and Sukhi reservoirs in the
state of Gujarat displaced only tribal communities. In Orissa,
tribal people made up 98% of those moved from their homes for
the Balimela Hydro project, and for the Upper Kolar dam they constituted
96%.
Dam building programmes are commonplace across
the developing world, but particularly in South East Asia and
Latin America. In most cases this involves the state-enforced
removal of communities. Like India, many governments have a poor
record in treatment of tribal or indigenous peoples—and
displaced communities have received little or no compensation
for the loss of their lands and way of life. There are many examples
of communities being deliberately defrauded by government and
legal systems.
PROPOSALS FOR
CHANGE
Current immigration policies are not even remotely
capable of dealing with the potential number of environmental
refugees. The burden of environmental refugees now falls more
heavily on poorer countries. In many of these, governments are
already failing to meet the needs of their people. And while nation
states should always maintain the ultimate responsibility for
their citizens, the world order has changed significantly since
the Geneva Convention was first agreed. Globalization has undermined
many of the powers of the nation state, even its ability to support
citizens at moments of crisis. To expect impoverished states to
respond to environmental calamities that are not of their own
making is to fail to acknowledge the extent to which national
sovereignty is constrained.
Dealing with the environmental refugee crisis
thus needs to be part of a wider global settlement that shifts
major new resources from North to South. This would recognize
that some states bear a disproportionate responsibility for problems
such as climate change, which should be reflected in their obligations
to displaced people. Economic considerations—World Bank
and International Monetary Fund structural adjustment plans, World
Trade Organization rules—have already enormously extended
de facto internationalization, constraining states' freedom to
make policy and resource decisions and giving new rights to capital
and goods to move across borders. If the free flow of goods, services
and money is protected by international agreements, it seems perverse
to deny the same rights to people.
The following steps are proposed:
— A Global UN Commission—reporting
to the UN Security Council, the General Assembly and ECOSOC on
the full legal, economic, political and social implications of
the growing number of environmental refugees and, in extreme cases,
of the threat posed by problems like global warming to actual
nationhood. The commission would make wide-ranging recommendations
for action.
— Update the Geneva Convention—The
Geneva Convention was posited to deal with the aftermath of World
War II. The original language that framed the Convention looks
outmoded and absurd in our globalize world. The UNHCR is in danger
of looking as out of date on the issue of whether environmental
threat should be a legitimate reason to claim refugee status.
Many experts in the field now agree that this is an increasing
reason for people fleeing their homelands. Granting environmental
refugees legal status will protect them—in place of, and
from, governments that often do not have the resources or the
will to do so. Sometimes it is those very governments who are
responsible for the degradation of the environment in the first
place—such as the dam building projects in India. It is
absurd to deny that these extensive building projects have not
been used politically against tribal or indigenous peoples in
many instances.
— Write a new Convention—If the
UNHCR feels unable to manage the transition from representing
those with political/religious/civil conflict fears of persecution,
perhaps the time has come for a separate international Convention,
which specifically focuses on the needs of those whose way of
life is being destroyed by environmental degradation. This could
in part be funded by:
— Compensation for ecological debts—the
world needs to recognize the case for ecological debt. This would
involve establishing an internationally agreed measure of ecological
debt, focused initially on the biggest one, climate change, and
the use of fossil fuels. A proportion of funds raised could go
to support Aid for regional refugees—more international
assistance needs to be given to those poorest countries that are
currently coping with refugees within their region.
ARGUMENTS FOR
CHANGE[83]
Defining refugee status, and the circumstances
under which people should be granted the protection of another
nation, has always been a controversial issue. People leave their
homes—and their homelands—for a wide variety of complex
reasons. Sometimes this is for economics, sometimes fleeing political
or religious persecution, sometimes to escape conflict.
Environmental displacement has placed old definitions
and categories under a huge new strain. Its scope is growing every
year: more people are now on the move than at any time in history.
National governments are rightly regarded as the main agency for
protecting citizens' rights, but the point at which governments
persecute people is the point they become refugees—and need
the protection of an international agency. For those displaced
by the loss or destruction of their homeland for environmental
reasons, this protection does not currently exist.
The countries and cultures most responsible
for global environmental degradation must acknowledge their role,
and begin to think about policies to tackle population movement
at its source. Placing new international obligations on them towards
environmental refugees would help to kick-start this process.
But unless we make these changes, and urgently, it will be too
late, not only for communities clinging on to ways of life undermined
fatally by global environmental change, but for those in the rich
world facing up to the poor man at their gates. Globalization
does not just mean rapid capital transfers and unlimited cheap
travel. Nor does it just mean treating the world as a playground,
museum or supermarket. It means that ignoring our neighbours is
no longer an option.
November 2003
82 The information for this section is taken from Chapter
four of the World Disasters Report 2002, written by the co-author
of this pocket book, Andrew Simms, edited by Jonathan Walter,
published by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red
Crescent Societies. Back
83
This evidence is taken from Environmental Refugees: The case for
recognition, by Molly Conisbee and Andrew Simms, New Economics
Foundation, September 2003. Back
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