Climate change and environmental ruin also drives migration

The UN University's Jean-Marc Coicaud & Janos Bogardi, with Maryam Niamir-Fuller of the UN Development Program and Philippe Boncour of the International Organization for Migration. Photo: T.Abraham/CWS

June 18, 2007

Choices based on faulty development paradigms are driving increasing number of people to flee creeping deserts, nutrient-depleted soil and disaster-stricken areas in search of food, work and a way out of poverty, according to United Nations specialists.

Speaking at a panel discussion on environmental refugees last month, Maryam Niamur-Fuller of the UN Development Program said that globalization and the pursuit of growth in exports and the Gross Domestic Product were responsible for the spurt in environmental migration. She also targeted single-sector goals such as mono-culture soy production in Brazil’s Mato Grosso State, which is pushing farmers to the fringes of the Amazon.

The policies driving these objectives are on the radar of advocacy and education efforts by Church World Service as it seeks economic justice, a better Farm Bill, universal access to water and sanitation, and eradication of hunger and poverty. An emerging focus is climate change, which affects many of the agency’s development and disaster assistance efforts worldwide. CWS also works closely with the UN on a wide range of issues.

“CWS is now in the process of creating a task group to look at climate change and its effects upon our programs,” said Joe Roberson who heads the agency’s work on immigration and refugees. “This will include a look at the possible displacements of millions of people and how CWS can respond.”

Long-term refugees returning to Afghanistan, Burundi and Sudan—three countries where CWS assists refugees coming home—find productive farmlands turning into desert due to prolonged drought, according to the program’s Erol Kekic.

A community prepares for future disasters in Tamil Nadu, India, where CWS supports home building by the Church's Auxiliary for Social Action in response to the 2004 tsunami. Photo: C. Herlinger/CWS

While people have always fled conflict or migrated to seek a better life, Niamur-Fuller said during last month’s panel discussion that global warming is emerging as a tipping point.

“Crop yields will fall 50 percent in the next 40 years if climate change is not addressed,” she said. “Major floods, wildfires and droughts have increased in the last decade.”

The United Nations University’s Janos Bogardi said land degradation was as old as agriculture and climate has always been unstable. But climate-related insurance losses have grown seven-fold in the last decade and more and more experts are connecting migration to environmental factors.

“We all agree that something is in the offing,” he said.

Critics say the environment is only one of many factors driving migration. They also warn that reframing migration could water down the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees. But even those critics admit the need for control of population movements, Bogardi pointed out.

Brian Gorlick of the New York Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees said human rights laws could be used to address the issue. He said there was no agreed definition of environmental refugees in international law.

“I won’t use that term,” Gorlick said.

But the UNDP’s Niamur-Fuller said it was better to treat root causes of migration within the context of development, not conflict.

Both Bogardi and Niamur-Fuller linked poverty to land-degradation and migration.

“The poor are most prone to be migrants,” said Niamur-Fuller. And globalization has widened the gap between rich and poor. In 1960 there were 30 people living in poverty to each wealthy person. In 2000, there that ratio is 80 to one.

“Migration occurs to cope with global inequities and loss of livelihoods,” Bogardi said. “People cut trees because of poverty but this increases the frequencies of disaster, via topsoil and watershed loss.”

Bogardi noted that catastrophes arising from unsustainable human activities affect rich countries also. Desertification is growing in the U.S. and Australia also, not just in the Sahel. A one-meter sea-level rise could affect Britain, Denmark and the Netherlands, not just the Mekong Delta. He alluded to the 2003 heat wave that killed more than 35,000 in Europe.

Bogardi said environmental migration needs to be recognized through specific inter-governmental treaties. “The environment must be mainstreamed in migration policies.”