The EcoRefugee…

...or  is there no such person?    

They number well over a million by now, the Syrians who have fled the civil war in their country and moved into Jordan and other neighboring countries. On the other side of the world, the 100,000 people of Kiribati, Alaska, are reluctantly preparing to leave their village before the rising ocean floods their homes, which lie only 10 feet above sea level. Similar and yet entirely different, these Syrians and native Alaskans are both victims of events way beyond their control, both fitting the category of displaced – or soon to be displaced – persons. Refugees, one political, the other environmental.

But there the similarity ends. Political refugee status is well defined in the 1951 United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees. According to this definition, refugees have crossed political borders because of fear of persecution as members of one of five particular groups: racial, religious, national, social or political. They do not feel their home country can protect them from such persecution. The environmental refugee, on the other hand, does not fit this neat categorization, and there are other problems as well:

• Statistics of displacement vary wildly depending on who is collecting them
• Modern migrants tend to have several reasons to flee their homes
• Much environmental migration is voluntary rather than forced
• Much such migration comes about because of gradual change like desertification, not sudden events like floods  

This question is pressing and will become more so, as desertification, rising sea levels, changing agricultural patterns and severe flooding become more commonplace. Meanwhile, the international community struggles to cram the term “environmental refugee” into a neat box. One expert, for example, recommended that the term should be apply only to those fleeing rapid or drastic changes to their environment. Poor farmers in Sudan, unable to make a living in on-going drought conditions, are not going to be very impressed by this definition. Desertification is gradual. Neither are they going to be happy to be classed as that bugaboo, “economic refugees”.

It is easy to become exasperated with such niggling and to think that the energy going into defining these unfortunates could sure be put to better use. This is to simplify the very real mushiness of the term “environmental refugee”, but it does suggest an entirely different approach. If this type of refugee needs a persecutor, suppose we start with the fact that the global north has practiced destructive environmental practices for so long that they have led to the plight of such refugees the world over. Just accepting responsibility ought to create a foundation on which practical solutions can be based. Not in the sense of assigning guilt, just making use of the very wealth that often accompanied those destructive practices. Think big, in other words, both internationally and morally. Realize that the environmental refugee is an entirely different animal from his political brother.  Create different types of help for those who flee sudden disaster, on the one hand, and those who need to be resettled gradually, but do not ignore the real need of the latter “new” type of refugee.