Environmental migrant

Environmental migrants are people who are forced to leave their home region due to sudden or long-term changes to their local or regional environment. These changes compromise their well-being or livelihood, and include increased

• Environmental emergency migrants: people who flee temporarily due to an environmental disaster or sudden environmental event. (Examples: someone forced to leave due to a hurricane, tsunami, earthquake, etc.)
• Environmental forced migrants: people who have to leave due to deteriorating environmental conditions. (Example: someone forced to leave due to a slow deterioration of their environment such as
  Panchkhapan have been forced to migrate due to water crises in their areas.^[10]
• Environmental motivated migrants also known as environmentally induced economic migrants: people who choose to leave to avoid possible future problems. (Example: someone who leaves due to declining crop productivity caused by desertification. A study conducted between 2014 and 2018 reveals that a large proportion of the deltaic populations of Volta delta in Africa, the
  Ganges Brahmaputra Meghna delta in Bangladesh and India, and Mahanadi delta in India cited economic reasons as a cause of their migration and only 2.8% cited environment reasons. But one third of migrant households perceived an increased exposure to environmental hazards and deltaic populations associated environmental factors with more insecure livelihoods. This shows how the environment is having a proximate effect on migration.)^[11]

• Pressured environmental migrants[12] – slow onset This type of migrant is displaced from their environment when an event is predicted prior to when it would be imperative for the inhabitants to leave.^[13] Such events could be desertification or prolonged drought, where the people of the region are no longer able to maintain farming or hunting to provide a hospitable living environment.^[14]
• Imperative environmental migrants^[15] – gradual onset These are migrants that have been or will be "permanently displaced" from their homes due to environmental factors beyond their control.
• Temporary environmental migrants^[15] – short term, sudden onset- This includes migrants suffering from a single event (i.e. Hurricane Katrina). This does not go to say that their status of being temporary is any less severe than that of the other, it simply means that they are able to go back to the place they fled from (though it may be undesirable to do so) granted that they are able to rebuild what was broken, and go on to maintain a similar quality of life to the one prior to the natural disaster. This type of migrant is displaced from their home state when their environment rapidly changes. They are displaced when disastrous events occur, such as tsunamis, hurricanes, tornadoes, and other natural disasters occur.^[16]

Global statistics

There have been a number of attempts over the decades to enumerate environmental migrants and refugees. Jodi Jacobson (1988) is cited as the first researcher to enumerate the issue, stating that there were already up to 10 million 'Environmental Refugees'. Drawing on 'worst-case scenarios' about sea-level rise, she argued that all forms of 'Environmental Refugees' would be six times as numerous as political refugees.^[18] By 1989, Mustafa Tolba, Executive Director of United Nations Environment Programme, was claiming that 'as many as 50 million people could become environmental refugees' if the world did not act to support sustainable development.^[19]

In the mid-1990s, British environmentalist, Norman Myers, became the most prominent proponent of this 'maximalist' school (Suhrke 1993), noting that "environmental refugees will soon become the largest group of involuntary refugees".^[20] Additionally, he stated that there were 25 million environmental refugees in the mid-1990s, further claiming that this figure could double by 2010, with an upper limit of 200 million by 2050 (Myers 1997).^[21] Myers argued that the causes of environmental displacement would include desertification, lack of water, salination of irrigated lands and the depletion of biodiversity. 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 by 2050.^[22] More recently, Myers has suggested that the figure by 2050 might be as high as 250 million.^[23]

Norman Myers is the most cited researcher in this field, who found that 25 million environmental migrants existed in 1995 in his work (Myers & Kent 1995),^[22] which drew upon over 1000 sources.^[24] However, Vikram Kolmannskog has stated that Myers' work can be 'criticized for being inconsistent, impossible to check and failing to take proper account of opportunities to adapt' (2008: 9).^[25] Furthermore, Myers himself has acknowledged that his figures are based upon 'heroic extrapolation' (Brown 2008: 12).^[26] More generally, Black has argued that there is 'surprisingly little scientific evidence' that indicates that the world is 'filling-up with environmental refugees' (1998: 23).^[27]

Society and culture

Popular culture

The notion of 'environmental migrant' has been a part of popular culture at least since The Grapes of Wrath, a 1939 novel by John Steinbeck.^[28]

Documentary films

• Eco Migrants: The Case of Bhola Island (2013), documentary movie directed by Susan Stein. Starring Katherine Jacobsen, Nancy Schneider, Bogumil Terminski
• Refugees of the Blue Planet (2006), documentary movie directed by Hélène Choquette & Jean-Philippe Duval.
• The Land Between (2014) documentary movie directed by David Fedele.^[29]

See also

References