Environmental changes and migration flows. Normative frameworks and policy responses (2024)

Migration and Climate Change

2011

Genetic and environmental factors affecting menarcheal age in Spanish women

Anthropologischer Anzeiger, 1997

Stay in Place or Migrate: A Research Perspective on Understanding Adaptation to a Changing Environment

Politicizing Environmental Displacement: A Four Category Approach to Defining Environmentally Displaced People

Despite their rising numbers, people displaced by environmental events receive little formal recognition in international law or policy. This article considers that this may be due, in part, to a failure among the international community—academics, human rights lawyers, and policymakers—to settle on a clear and robust politicized definition of ‘environmentally displaced persons’ built around the circumstances of their displacement. Without a clear definition of environmentally displaced persons that recognizes the deeply political nature of the challenge they present, this article suggests that the international community will be challenged to afford this vulnerable migrant group the rights and recognition they deserve. The article first engages in a brief analysis of the common trends in conceptualizing and defining environmentally displaced people, particularly as they relate to international refugee law. I argue that the dominant trend is to employ a depoliticized or ‘naturalized’ understanding of environmental displacement that does not adequately capture its political complexity. I then offer a four-category, politicized approach to understanding environmental displacement that rejects the unhelpful term “environmental refugee” and seeks to capture both the political drivers and the complexity of human displacement driven by climate change.

Disasters and Displacement: Gaps in Protection

Natural disasters, particularly those related to climate change, are fast becoming a leading cause of forced displacement although conceptual, normative and institutional frameworks to provide human rights protection to the environmentally displaced are not yet in place. This article discusses the human rights and protection dimensions of disaster-induced displacement, identifies the major challenges to protecting disaster victims, and proposes ways forward. The authors argue that while most environmentally displaced persons are expected to remain within their own countries, there is a lack of clarity about the status and protection needs of those uprooted by environmental degradation and other ‘slow-onset’ disasters as opposed to those displaced by ‘sudden-onset’ disasters. By far the biggest protection gap exists for those who cross borders. These individuals do not generally qualify as refugees under the 1951 Refugee Convention, there is no normative framework to address their specific needs and vulnerabilities and States have not been willing to commit to more than temporary protection on an ad hoc basis. The need is now critical for new approaches to be developed for the environmentally displaced, including expanded normative and institutional frameworks, comprehensive national policies, national and international monitoring, rights training, and more effective ways of dealing with governments that fail to protect their populations.

The Agulu-Nanka Gully Erosion Menace In Nigeria: What Does the Future Hold for the Population at Risk?

Climate-induced population displacements in a 4 ° C+ world

Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences, 2010

Massive population displacements are now regularly presented as one of the most dramatic possible consequences of climate change. Current forecasts and projections show that regions that would be affected by such population movements are low-lying islands, coastal and deltaic regions, as well as sub-Saharan Africa. Such estimates, however, are usually based on a 2 ° C temperature rise. In the event of a 4 ° C+ warming, not only is it likely that climate-induced population movements will be more considerable, but also their patterns could be significantly different, as people might react differently to temperature changes that would represent a threat to their very survival. This paper puts forward the hypothesis that a greater temperature change would affect not only the magnitude of the associated population movements, but also—and above all—the characteristics of these movements, and therefore the policy responses that can address them. The paper outlines the policy evolutions tha...

United States Environmental Migration: Vulnerability, Resilience, and Policy Options for Internally Displaced Persons

This paper explores the complex process of environmental migration in the United States of America (U.S.) focusing on vulnerability to and resilience following this migration. It will be reviewed how internal environmental migration has resulted from many environmental changes and disasters in the U.S., and the potential for increased movement from both gradual-onset and sudden climate impacts will be discussed. Drawing on evidence from previous disasters, it is argued that environmental migration is a social phenomenon in which environmental changes are filtered through social structures to force the most vulnerable populations to permanently mi-grate and, once displaced, these populations face numerous barriers to becoming resilient. With this understanding of U.S. environmental migration, Domestic disaster, social service, and discrimination policy are analysed to determine how displaced populations’ resilience, related to housing, economic resources, health, and discrimination, is addressed. It is concluded that although current policies show potential for increasing the resilience of forced and permanently displaced populations, incorporation of international standards for internally displaced populations is necessary to ensure the broadest protection and assistance and to fully address the social-demographic consequences of environmental change.

Climate Change and Institutional Change in UNHCR

Migration and Climate Change: An Overview

Refugee Survey Quarterly, 2011