Transcript ppt - Geography & Resource Management

« International Geographical Union »
Hong Kong International Population Conference,
Chinese University of HongKong, 10th-12th July 2007
Consequences of environmental refugees:
towards a conceptual framework
Allan M Findlay
and Alistair Geddes
Centre for Applied Population Research
University of Dundee
Dundee DD1 4HN, UK
[email protected]
Image source: Black R (1998) Refugees, Environment
and Development (London: Longman)
Paper Outline
1. Introduction
2. Debate over “environmental refugees”
3. Consequences of debate: evidence of new
conceptual framework(s)
4. In particular, the “borderland” with work
on vulnerable populations
1. Introduction
•
•
•
•
Debate over environmental refugees has not been
resolved
However, both proponents and critics have made calls
for more research to understand “root” or
“underlying” causes”, and to link research to practice
What evidence is there of this from recent literature?
What are the overlaps—the “borderland” between
this literature and recent work on other aspects of
vulnerable populations?
2. The environmental refugees debate:
• 1985: term became used in reports by several
international organisations:
Notably El-Hinnawi (1985) Environmental Refugees, United Nations
Environment Program, Nairobi.
• 1990s: debate shaped around the views of Norman
Myers and Richard Black
• Key publications:
Myers and Kent 1995: Environmental Exodus: An Emergent Crisis in
the Global Arena. Report for Climate Institute, Washington DC
Black, 1998: Refugees, Environment and Development (London:
Longman).
Black 2001: Environmental Refugees: Myth or Reality? United
Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Working Paper No 34,
Geneva.
Myers’ view
• Clear causal connection:
There are fast growing numbers of people who can no longer
gain a secure livelihood in their homelands because of
drought, soil erosion, desertification, deforestation and other
environmental problems. In their desperation, these
‘environmental refugees’ … feel they have no alternative to
seek sanctuary elsewhere, however hazardous the attempt
Numbers:
- Myers claimed that by 1995 there were at least 25 million
environmental refugees, and that total could double by 2010
due to global warming
- There could be as many as 200 million at risk; updated this
year, to 250 million
Myers’ view
• Push for recognition:
We cannot continue to ignore environmental refugees simply
because there is no institutionalized mode of dealing with
them. If official standing were to be accorded to these
refugees, this might help to engender a recognized
constituency for, for example, those 900 million people who
endure some degree of desertification
p. 612 in Myers (2002) Environmental refugees: a growing phenomenon of the
21st century, Phil. Transactions of the Royal Society, Series B, 347 (1420), 60913.
Myers’ view
Prominent in popularising the term:
New Economics
Foundation—2003
Christian Aid—
last month
Myers Publications
1993: Environmental refugees in a globally warmed world,
Bioscience, 43 (11), 752-6.
1995: Environmental Exodus: An Emergent Crisis in the Global
Arena. Report for Climate Institute, Washington DC (with J.Kent).
2001: Environmental refugees, Population and Environment: A
Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies, 19, 167-82.
2002: Environmental refugees: a growing phenomenon of the 21st
century, Phil. Transactions of the Royal Society, Series B, 347
(1420), 609-13.
2005: Environmental refugees: an emergent security issue. Paper
presented to the 13th Economic Forum, Prague, May 22.
Critics—Black’s position
• Has consistently rejected the conceptual and political
merit of Myers’ argument
• Conceptual:
– Forced displacement is multi-causal; so the role of
environmental change in forced displacement is by no means
easy to determine
– “environmental refugees” threatens to skew understanding
towards proximate causes, rather than focussing on
underlying forces (political, economic, social)
– Questions actual evidence to demonstrate the linkage which
Myers claims
Black’s position
• Political:
– “refugee” is already legally defined; concern that popularity
of “environmental refugee” in fact de-politicises causes of
displacement
• Also ignores internal displacement
– Potential for withdrawal of asylum assistance:
• Especially in developing world; asylum regimes in North are already
strict
– Adverse effects on other policy responses
• guided by proximate causes of displacement, rather than an analysis
of underlying causes
Black’s position
• The complex interrelationships involved confound a
scientific ‘blueprint’ approach:
what is required in both research and policy is a more
flexible, place-specific and yet theoretically informed
approach, that is aware of both political and historical
context (p.22, Black, 1998)
• Black’s work generally well-received by social
scientists (sympathetic to social constructivism and
how labels are manipulated by those in power, and
suspicious of recommending Myers type of
‘preventative policies), but ignored by development
NGOs and most physical scientists
Publications
Richard Black:
1998: Refugees, Environment and Development (London: Longman).
2001: Environmental Refugees: Myth or Reality? United Nations
High Commissioner for Refugees, Working Paper No 34, Geneva.
Also:
Kibreab, G. (1997) Environmental causes and impact of refugee
movements: a critique of the current debate, Disasters, 21(1): 2038
Castles, S. (2002), Environmental change and forced migration:
making sense of the debate, UNHCR Working Paper No 70,
Geneva.
So, what might be the consequences of
the debate? …
• Both Myers and Black (and others) have called for further
research to understand relationships between
environmental degradation and forced migration—i.e., the
role “environment” actually plays, but the nature of the
research to be undertaken depends on what is
‘knowable’ and one’s methodological stance.
• How should the academy (and population geography in
particular) engage in this area of concern?
3. Consequences of debate: contrasting
conceptual framework(s)?
Approach A: Policies linked to scientific forecasting,
assessment of population vulnerability in exposure to
climatic change and promotion of strategies to
increase ability to adapt (rather than move)
• Eg analysis of IPCC scenarios makes possible
identification of populations most ‘at risk’.
Geographers at CIESIN (2006) have mapped
‘Vulnerability to Climate Change’ based on:
a) IPCC scenarios,
b) population sensitivity to climate change, and
c) assessments of adaptive capacity
CIESIN projections of vulnerability to climate change
What would such an approach mean for policy
research on environmental refugees?
1) Focusing international resources in countries
with the greatest vulnerability (eg in East Arica
and China)
2) Targeted policy measures to reduce the scale of
environmental migration
- increase resilience (awareness progs)
- reduce sensitivity (mitigation measures)
- increase adaptability (livelihood alternatives) _
3) Advocacy of greater spatial sensitivity in the
international migration policies of receiving
countries (akin to the way that policies on
acceptance of political refugees is linked to a list
of at risk source countries)
Problems of Approach A
1. Top down (exports solving the problem to
a select number of ‘developing countries)
and is of course only paliative
2. Continues to endorse a mono-causal
reductionist view of migration
3. Constructs environmentally-linked moves
as ‘negative’
4. Ignores social construction of
vulnerability
3. Consequences of debate: contrasting
conceptual framework(s)?
• Approach B: Some look to political ecology:
– as a broadly-defined, geographical approach
– with a characteristic “dialogic” and “interactive” mode of
enquiry* with other sub-fields and cognate disciplines
– avoids technocratic approach to problem-solving, with
instead emphasis on understanding political role of different
actors in influencing social and environmental outcomes
– in consequence, greater support for place-specific / “bottomup” responses to environmental conflict
* After Zimmerer K. 2007 Cultural ecology (and political ecology) in the ‘environmental
borderlands’: exploring the environmental connectivities within geography, Progress in
Human Geography, 3(2) 227-44
Evidence from recent literature
• Difference between (a) simply accepting “shared
importance” of environmental, political and economic
considerations, and (b) how environment actually
becomes integrated in migration decisions
• Led to interest in understanding local social relations:
– in recent migration studies, recognises importance of
understanding migration subjectivity
– and in political ecology, understanding social construction of
natural resources and their management
Evidence from recent literature
• Theorising local social relations draws on
Foucauldian theory of power/knowledge
– Power as an active, open, “effect”, productive of new knowledge
and ways of knowing which continuously structure the effect of
power.
• Example:
– Carr, E. 2005 Placing the environment in migration: environment,
economy and power in Ghana’s Central Region, Environment and
Planning A, 27 925-946
Problems of Approach B
1. While strong on understanding ‘causes’ is
weak on identifying ‘solutions’
2. Unlikely to be resourced by most
international agencies because of
difficulties of implementing a bottom-up
approach
3. Like approach A is at risk of seeing
mobility as a ‘problem’
4. ‘Borderlands’ with understanding of
‘vulnerable populations’
“Post-debate” research on environmental refugees shares
the same challenges as other research on vulnerability
To add more dense meaning to concepts borrowed from non-scientific
discourse and to connect them to wider theoretical frameworks
(Hogan 2002 176, in Hogan and Marandola Jr (2005), Towards an
interdiscplinary conceptualisation of vulnerability, Population, Space
and Place 11, 455-71.)
Yet “borderland” signifies overlapping ideas, theories,
methodologies on which in-depth, bilateral and
sustained interaction may be possible
4. Approaches to understanding geography
of vulnerability
Weak
Hazard mapping of
correlates of
vulnerability
Positivism
Vulnerable
Structures
Structuraliism
(CIESEN, 2006)
Spatial
context
Agency and the
experience of
vulnerability
Strong
Weak
Spaces of
vulnerability
Political ecology (Zimmerer, 2007)
Power
Strong
4. Context and power/knowledge
• A relational perspective leads to interesting questions about
‘environmental refugees’ – is the Myers-Black debate a false
dichotomy?
• Who constructs environmental refugees as ‘vulnerable’ or a ‘problem’
and why? Might mobility not be a sign of resilience?
• Should there be a search for policies that see environmentally-led
mobility as a potential win-win situation for movers and sending and
receiving areas?
Summary
• Sympathy for Black’s concerns about environmentally-led
migration as often local and multi-causal
• Nevertheless mapping spaces of population vulnerability to
climate change holds potential for active policy intervention
• This must not mean excluding a relational perspective that
questions why some seek to benefit from the construction of
an ‘environmental refugee’ category while others resist it
• Population geographers who recognise that mobility is a
long-established livelihood strategy (often related to the
environment) are well-placed to argue for a more positive
policy framework, based on an appreciation of the wider
context of such moves (interacting physical spaces, social
relations and relational geographies)