Expert seek UN protection for environmental migrants

18 May, 2007: Rising global temperatures and degradation of land are compelling more people worldwide to migrate.

This is creating a wave of what may be called environmental refugees, who need protection of the United Nations, according to Janos Bogardi, a professor at the United Nations University.

He has requested the United Nations to recognise that droughts, earthquakes, hurricanes and other environmental factors – many of which are worsening because of climate change – have played a role in the migration of millions of people worldwide.

Professor Bogardi says accurate, comprehensive numbers on environmental migrants are hard to get since migrants often leave home for a variety of reasons, the Associated Press has reported.

Yet, the United Nations refugee agency estimated in 2002 that there were about 24 million people worldwide who had fled floods, famine and other poor environmental conditions.

A report from 2005 by Norman Myers, a professor of environmental science at Duke University, predicted that, by 2010, about 50 million people would have migrated for environmental reasons.

The Tsunami that occurred in the Indian Ocean in December 2004 displaced over 2 million people, many of whom are still in refugee camps, says a 2006 report from the United Nations’ office for Tsunami recovery.

Professor Bogardi, director of the United Nations University’s Institute for Environment and Human Security based in Bonn, Germany, said that many in the international community are wary of addressing the issue of environmental migration because they fear that the vague term might dilute current UN protections for refugees.

“If we overload the UN convention,” Professor Bogardi told a panel discussion at the UN headquarters, “we are weakening one of the strongest tools for protecting refugees.” The UN should find other means of helping environmental migrants, he said.

Professor Bogardi is of the view that environmental factors often lie at the root of more obvious causes of migration. For instance, competition for scarce resources may end up in violent conflict, over-mining or excessive deforestation.

He suggested that either the United Nations adopt a new convention aimed solely at protecting environmental migrants or that provisions for such migrants be included in international environmental treaties.

Professor Bogardi proposes three broad categories to distinguish among people who leave their homes – those who are influenced only in part by worsening environmental conditions, those who leave to escape the worst effects of a poor environment, and those who are forced to flee a disaster.

Like other migrants, environmental migrants most often flee the developing world for richer countries. However, no country is exempt from the negative effects of climate change. Over 75,000 people are thought to have died from the 2003 heat wave in Western Europe.

Hurricane Katrina, which devastated the United States’ Gulf Coast in August 2005, temporarily displaced 1.5 million people. Estimates indicate that about 300,000 of those displaced will never return home.

Developing countries, Professor Bogardi said, will be the least able to cope with environmental change and should receive the most help from international organisations to rehabilitate salvageable land and to assist the safe passage of people from places that are no longer inhabitable.