Norman Myers
Norman Myers is scientist and consultant in environment and development. He has been an honorary visiting fellow at Oxford University and in various American Universities. Myers has been presented three important awards: the Volvo Environment Prize, the UNEP/Sasakawa Environment Prize and the Blue Planet Prize. He has also served as a policy adviser to U.S political leaders and to the European Commission. He has focused a major portion of his work on tropical forests, biodiversity, consumption and sustainable development. He is the author of numerous works such as “Ultimate Security” (Editions First, 1994), “Tropical Forest and our Future” (Rei Sub, 1992) and recently “The New Consumers, the Influence of Affluence on the Environment” (Island Press, 2004).
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Norman Myers is scientist and consultant in environment and development. He has been an honorary visiting fellow at Oxford University and in various American Universities. Myers has been presented...
Environmental Refugees: an emergent security issue
29/08/2008 4:52 pm
There is a new phenomenon in the global arena: environmental refugees. These are people who can no longer gain a secure livelihood in their homelands because of drought, soil erosion, desertification, deforestation and other environmental problems, together with associated problems of population pressures and profound poverty. In their desperation, these people feel they have no alternative but to seek sanctuary elsewhere, however hazardous the attempt. Not all of them have fled their countries, many being internally displaced. But all have abandoned their homelands on a semi-permanent if not permanent basis, with little hope of a foreseeable return.
As far back as 1995 (latest date for a comprehensive assessment), these environmental refugees totalled at least 25 million people, compared with 27 million traditional refugees (people fleeing political oppression, religious persecution and ethnic troubles). The environmental refugees total could well double between 1995 and 2010. Moreover, it could increase steadily for a good while thereafter as growing numbers of impoverished people press ever harder on over-loaded environments. When global warming takes hold, there could be as many as 200 million people overtaken by disruptions of monsoon systems and other rainfall regimes, by droughts of unprecedented severity and duration, and by sea-level rise and coastal flooding.
Of the 25 million environmental refugees in 1995, there were roughly five million in the African Sahel, where a full ten million people had fled from recent droughts, only half returning home. Another four million, out of eleven million refugees of all types, were in the Horn of Africa including Sudan. In other parts of Sub-Saharan Africa, where 80 million people were considered to be semi-starving due primarily to environmental factors, seven million people had been obliged to migrate in order to obtain relief food. In early 2000 Sudan featured eight million people who were officially considered at risk of starvation, with another six million in Somalia and three million in Kenya, plus several million others in other countries. A sizeable though undocumented proportion of these could be characterized as environmental refugees.
* Based on Myers, N. and Kent, J. (1995) Environmental Exodus: An Emergent Crisis in the Global Arena, The Climate Institute, Washington DC; and Myers, N. (2001), Environmental Refugees: Our Latest Understanding, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: 356: 16.1-16.5.
http://www.osce.org/documents/eea/2005/05/14488_en.pdf
Norman MYERS
13 Economic Forum, Prague, 23-27 May 2005.
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| Shirley Medley |
Pacyfic states and working definition of environmental refugees Environmental change has a multiplier effect on other drivers of migration, such as economic hardship and crop failure. Yet terms such as “environmental refugees” and “climate refugees” may cause more problems than they solve. Neither category has status under international law. In the case of small island nations, there is an additional obstacle: If a whole state becomes submerged or uninhabitable, and there is no prospect of return, temporary refuge will not be enough. Bogumil Terminski argued in “Environmentally Induced Migrations” that there is a huge conceptual difference between “environmental migrants” and “environmental refugees”. Accirding to this author environmental migrant is a persons making a short-lived, cyclical, or longerterm change of residence, of a voluntary or forced character, due to specific environmental factors. Environmental refugees, therefore, are people compelled to spontaneous, short-lived, cyclical, or longer-term changes of residence due to sudden or gradually worsening changes in environmental factors important to their living, which may be of either a short-term or an irreversible character. As the evidence for global environmental change has accumulated over the past decade, academics, policymakers, and the media have given more attention to the issue of “environmental refugees.” A major concern is whether environmental change will displace large numbers of vulnerable people in the developing world, particularly from rural areas where livelihoods are especially dependent on climate and natural resources. A widely cited article estimated that more than 25 million people were displaced by environmental factors in 1995. Myers argued that the causes of environmental displacement would include desertification, lack of water, salination of irrigated lands and the depletion of bio-diversity. He also hypothesised that displacement would amount to 30m in China, 30m in India, 15m in Bangladesh, 14m in Egypt, 10m in other delta areas and coastal zones, 1m in island states, and with otherwise agriculturally displaced people totalling 50m (Myers & Kent 1995) by 2050. |
