Environmental refugees are the people, who can no longer access a secure livelihood in their motherlands because of e n v i r o n m e n t a l c a l a m i t i e s l i k e d e s e r t i  c a t i o n , c l o u d b u r s t i n g , deforestation, ooding, tsunami, e r o s i o n , l a n d s l i d i n g a n d o t h e r environmental problems, together with the associated problems of population pressures and prevalent poverty.

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Environmental refugees: Searching for the haunt
Artefact
Abstract
“Refugees have been deprived of their
homes, but they must not be deprived
of their futures.”
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon With
changing environment and climatic
conditions people are forcing to migrate
their homelands and to other countries.
This is the serious issue all over the world
to manage this migratory population
that forced by environmental calamities.
India is expected to experience
unprecedented intrusion of refugees
which will create pressure or stress on
natural resources and also prompting
people to ght for them. It has been
estimated that disasters have displaced
over 27 million people each year between
2008 and 2013.
Environmental refugees are the people,
who can no longer access a secure
livelihood in their motherlands because of
e n v i r o n m e n t a l c a l a m i t i e s l i k e
desertication, cloud bursting,
deforestation, ooding, tsunami,
erosion, land sliding and other
environmental problems, together with
the associated problems of population
pressures and prevalent poverty. It is
not necessary that people who faced
calamities are left their countries, many
being internally displaced. The
displacement may be partial, semi
permanent and permanent as related to
type of calamities, for example some
factors like tsunami completely remove
the habitation and erosion partially. In
1995, total numbers of environmental
refugees were 25 million as compared to
27 million traditional refugees (for
examples, people eeing political
oppression, religious persecution and
ethnic troubles). According to some
estimation, the total number of
environmental refugees could be double
by the year 2010. In early 1999, there
were near about 22 million traditional
and 'internationally recognized' refugees
globally.
Introduction
Governments of several nations have
long recognized that forced migration
and displaced persons pose a signicant
international challenge to refugees and
to host countries that provide shelter.
The United Nations met in Geneva in
1951 to discuss and draft a convention
relating to the legal status of refugees.
In the 1967 Protocol relating to the
“Status of Refugees”, these changes
were codied (Marshall, 2011). In this
protocol 'refugee' is dened as someone
who, “owing to well-founded fear of being
persecuted for reasons of race, religion,
nationality, membership of a particular
social group or political opinion, is
outside the country of his nationality and
is unable, or owing to such fear, is
unwilling to avail himself of the protection
of that country; or who, not having a
nationality and being outside the country
of his formal habitual residence as a
result of such events, is unable or, owing
to such fear, is unwilling to return to it”(
Convention and Protocol Relating to the
Status of Refugees, 1967).
The term "environmental refugee" was
rst proposed by Lester Brown of the
World watch Institute in the in 1976 but
perhaps the most cited contributions
was given by El-Hinnawi (1985) and
Jacobson (1988) in 1985 in the report
of United Nations Environment
Programme. After that, there has been
several other similar categories of
words, including "forced environmental
migrant", "environmentally motivated
migrant", "climate refugee", "climate
change refugee", "environmentally
displaced person (EDP)", "disaster
refugee", "environmental displacee",
“Coastal refugee”, "eco-refugee",
"ecologically displaced person" and
"environmental-refugee-to-be (ERTB)"
have been utilized (Boano et al., 2008).
These terms are very similar to each
other and create lot of confusions. Here
these terms are simplied and explained
in brief.
Environmental refugees are the people
who have been forced to leave their
traditional habitat, temporarily or
permanently, because of a marked
environmental disruption (natural and/or
anthropogenic) that jeopardised their
existence and/or seriously affected the
quality of their life. Sometimes it is also
known as ecological refugees and this
term rst appeared in 1970s.
Environmental forced migrants are the
people, who are forced to leave their
home/land region due to sudden or long-
term changes to their local environment
which compromise their well being or
secure livelihood, such changes are held
to include increased droughts,
desertication, sea level rise, and
disruption of seasonal weather patterns
such as monsoons (Bogumil, 2011).
The term climate refugees or climate
migrants refers to the subset of
environmental migrants forced to move
due to sudden or gradual alterations in
the natural environment related to at
least one of three impacts of climate
change, i.e., sea-level rise, extreme
weather events, and drought and water
scarcity. The people who are forced to
leave their inhabited due to long-term
changes in surrounding climatic
conditions known as climate change
refugees. Coastal refugees are the
people who forced to displace their
locations due to inundation of land into
sea by rise of sea level.
On 4 Dec, 2000, the United Nations
General Assembly in Resolution 55/76
decided that, from 2001, 20 June would
be celebrated as World Refugee Day. In
this resolution, the General Assembly
noted that 2001 marked the 50th
anniversary of the 1951 Convention
relating to the Status of Refugees
(United Nations General Assembly,
2000). After this, each year on June
20th the United Nations, United Nations
Refugee Agency (UNHCR), NGOs and
other several social groups around the
world host World Refugee Day events in

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order to draw the public's attention to
the millions of refugees and internally
displaced persons worldwide who have
been forced to ee their habitat due to
climate change, climatic extremes, war,
conict and persecution. Each year,
UNHCR announces a theme for its World
Refugee Day campaign. The World
Refugee Day 2015 theme was “with
courage let us all combine”.
The World Refugee Day is celebrated to
eliminate all the horric violence from the
countries and community which is the
main reason of people's displacement and
formation of refugee. Near about 55% of
all the refugees come from Afghanistan,
Iraq, Somalia, Syria and Sudan. The event
is established to prevent huge scale
difculties leading to the violence in the
international communities and to
promote the life saving solutions for
refugees.
According to International humanitarian
law mandates that there are four
principal elements to the denition of the
term refugee, as under the Refugee
Convention. These essentials are herein
enumerated; (i) They must be outside
their country of origin, (ii) They must be
unwilling or unable to avail themselves of
the protection of their country or return
there, (iii) Such inability or unwillingness
should be attributable to a well-founded
fear of being persecuted and (iv) The
persecution so feared must be based on
reasons of race, religion, nationality,
membership of a particular social group,
or political opinion.
Denitions
According to Myers and Kent (1995), the
environmental refugees are 'the persons
who no longer gain a secure livelihood in
their traditional homelands because of
what are primarily environmental factors
of unusual scope'.
The United Nations Environmental
Program (UNEP, 1985) has dened
environmental refugees as “people who
have been forced to leave their
traditional habitat, temporarily or
permanently, because of a marked
environmental disruption (natural and/or
triggered by people) that jeopardized
their existence and/or seriously affected
the quality of their life”.
The UNICEF denes a refugee as
“someone who has been forced to leave
their country because they are unable to
live in their home or they fear they will be
harmed. This can be due to a number of
reasons, including ghting or natural
disasters, like earthquakes and oods”
(Marshall, 2011).
Categorization of environmental
refugees
The environmental refugees were
classied by Egyptian El-Hinnawi of the
National Research Centre, Cairo in
1985 into three categories.
Category 1: People temporarily
displaced due to environmental stress.
In this situation damages are severe,
but the land and people's lives can
usually be re-established after clean up
and rebuilding for example natural
disasters (earthquakes, volcanoes,
massive storms, environmental
mishaps, etc.
Category 2: People permanently
displaced and resettled in another area
for example permanent changes (dams),
natural disasters that permanently
damage an area (volcanoes).
Category 3 : People who can no longer
be supported by their lands because of
environmental degradation.
In another classication, environmental
refugees are also classied into three
c a t e g o r i e s b y I n t e r n a t i o n a l
Organisation for Migration.
(1) Environmental emergency migrants:
The people who ee temporarily due to
an environmental disaster or sudden
environmental event. For example,
someone forced to leave due to
hurricane, tsunami, earthquake, etc.
(2) Environmental forced migrants: The
people who have to leave due to
deteriorating environmental conditions.
For example, someone forced to leave due
to a slow deterioration of their
environment such as deforestation,
coastal deterioration, etc.
(3) Environmental motivated migrants:
These are also known as environmentally
induced economic migrants; people who
choose to leave to avoid possible future
problems. For example, someone who
leaves due to declining crop productivity
caused by desertication.
Factors leading to environmental
refugees
There are lot of reasons for displacement
of people from their native habitat like
that natural disasters (oods, cloud
burst, tsunami, cyclones, earthquakes,
volcanic eruption, sea level rise etc),
industrial accidents (Bhopal gas tragedy,
Chernobyl accident, etc), conicts and
wars, climate change, greater resource
scarcity, desertication, risks of
droughts etc. But according to Lonergan
notes (1998), ve groups of factors can
be singled out as environmental push
elements that might lead to migration
such as, (i) Natural disasters (ii)
Progressive evolution of the environment
(iii) Development projects that involve
changes in the environment (iv) Industrial
accidents and (v) Environmental
consequences due to conicts.
The displacement scenario in India and
around the World Environmental refugees
are the person who can no longer gain a
secure livelihood in his homeland because
of drought, soil erosion, desertication,
deforestation and other environmental
problems, together with associated
problems of population pressures and
profound poverty. In their desperation,
environmental refugees feel they have no
alternative but to seek sanctuary
elsewhere, however hazardous the
attempt. Not all of them have ed their
countries, many being internally
displaced. But all have abandoned their
homelands on a semi-permanent if not
permanent basis, with little hope of
return. According to an estimate, in

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Artefact
1995 these environmental refugees
totalled at least 25 million which could
have doubled by now (The Times of India,
2011).
In India, the government wanted to build
a series of dams in Narmada Valley in
Gujarat, much to the dismay of
detractors who say the move could
devastate the river. Activists claim that
the completed Narmada project would
displace more than 1 million people.
Scattered throughout the developing
world are 135 million people threatened
by severe desertication, and 550 million
people subject to chronic water
s h o r t a g e s ( U N D e v e l o p m e n t
Programme, 2000). According to
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change report (2007) by 2050 the
estimated rise in sea level in the
Bangladesh coastal areas would be one
metre, and by 2100, it would be around
two metres. Researcher said that India
would face serious consequences due to
environmental refugees in the next 50
years. Around 30 million refugees will be
triggered by the rise in sea level, erosion
and effects on soil fertility due to climate
change.
In 1990, the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change (IPCC) noted that the
greatest single impact of climate change
could be on human migration with millions
of people displaced by shoreline erosion,
coastal ooding and agricultural
disruption. The most widely repeated
prediction of refugees by climate being
200 million by 2050. Since 2008, 26.4
million people a year have been displaced
by natural disasters. In accordance with
the estimates of UNEP, by 2060 there
could be 50 million environmental
refugees in Africa alone (Refugee Studies
Centre, 2008). It estimated in 2001
that for the rst time the number of
environmental/climate refugees
exceeded those displaced by war. The UN
High Commissioner for Refugees stated
that 36 million people were displaced by
natural disasters in 2009, and about 20
million of those were forced to move for
climate change-related issues.
During 2012, approximately 32.4 million
people were displaced by environmental
disasters, including those who were
forced to relocate within their countries
of origin and those who sought refuge
through international migration. 98% of
this displacement was caused by
climate- and weather-related disasters,
especially ooding. While developing
nations tend to be disproportionately
affected by such displacement, often
due to “compounded vulnerability” of
repeated natural disasters and difculty
r e b u i l d i n g i n f r a s t r u c t u r e a n d
protections for the future, wealthy
countries also suffered considerable
environmental-induced displacement
during 2012 (IDMC, 2012). Greater
resource scarcity, desertication, risks
of droughts and oods, and rising sea
levels could drive many millions of people
to migrate". This alarming prediction
appears in the review of the economic
consequences of global warming
delivered to the British government by
Sir Nicholas Stern at the end of
November 2006 (Stern, 2006).
Consequences of Environmental
Migration
The consequences of the migration of
people at other places, is also a reason
for further damage to the environment.
The initial damage to the environment
begins in the refugee camps itself,
where space is created by cutting down
on trees, create burden on local
resources, waste generation, pollution
in water bodies and conicts. Yet as the
problem becomes more pressing, our
policy responses fall ever-further short
of measuring up to the challenge. To
repeat a pivotal point, environmental
refugees have still to be ofcially
recognized as a problem at all. Aside of
this, the newly migrated population lives
in the room of poverty, on account of
having frugal means to get by with life.
Some of the basic problems are threat
to natural resources, poverty, danger to
existence, spreading of diseases,
conicts and war, food shortage,
struggle for space etc.
Remedial approaches
The situation of refugees can be observed
and understand only by sustainable and
deep management approach. There is lot
of scope for preventive policies, with the
aim of minimizing the need to migrate by
ensuring an acceptable livelihood in
established habitats.
Their management should be priority
basis: an expanded approach towards
refugees generally in order to include
environmental refugees in particular, is
necessary.
Hunger management approach: The
policies should include with hunger
management approach through proper
balancing of food demand.
Finding out root cause: a widened and
deepened understanding of environmental
refugees by establishing the root causes
of the problem is needed. Not only
environmental causes but associated
problems such as security concerns, plus
the interplay of the two sets of forces,
are to be understood. There are many
conceptual grey areas as concerns
proximate and ultimate causes, the
contributory roles of population
pressures and poverty, the linkages to
ethnic tensions and conventional conict,
and so lengthily forth. Consider too the
root causes of famine. If a famine has
been human-made, it can be human-
unmade, whereas natural factors can only
be managed and accommodated.
Asylum management: provide proper
habitat for their livelihood and survival.
But insist of all these approaches, still
there is lack of sustainable development.
This applies notably to reliable access to
food, water, energy, health and other
basic human needs, lack of which is behind
many environmental refugees' need to
migrate. There would be a little
investment to foster sustainable
development in developing countries
through greater policy emphasis on
environmental safeguards from different
calamities that force to migration.

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Artefact
The epithet of 'environmental refugees' is
a legal misnomer because they may
suffer from several reasons. It is not
practical to advocate an extension of the
denition of the term refugee to include
those who are displaced or migrants by
environmental activities. While there is
direct link between environment and
migration but there is a lack of evidence
that the environment can be a sole and
substantive cause of migration, or that
migration can have a direct and
substantive impact on the environment.
A t s o m e p l a c e s e n v i r o n m e n t a l
degradation shows migration ows.
Global warming could, in particular, lead
to major forced displacements. This will
Summary
result principally from rising sea levels,
but will only progressively manifest itself
over the coming centuries, with the
exception of the ooding of certain
islands.
Many researchers noted that even if
disasters become more frequent in the
future, political efforts and measures of
protection will be able to lowering the
need to emigrate provided that the
necessary nancial means are made
available. Even rising sea levels could be
partially counteracted by the erection of
dykes or the lling in of threatened
zones. The Stern report is clearly
describes that "the exact number who
will actually be displaced or forced to
migrate will depend on the level of to be
several billion dollars. It would also risk
threatening the coherence of an
international framework of refugee
protection that already has difculty in
obliging states to respect their
commitments. As stated in 2005 by the
then Under Secretary General of the UN,
Hans van Ginkel "This is a highly complex
issue, with global organizations already
overwhelmed by the demands of the
conventionally-recognized refugees as
originally dened in 1951. We should
prepare now, however, to dene, accept
and accommodate this new breed of
refugee within international framework".
1 2 3 4 5
- Sandeep Kumar , Anand Kumar Gupta , Shiv Prasad , Shakeel A. Khan , Lal Chand Malav
1,3,4,5
ICAR-Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi-11001
2
ICAR-Indian Institute of Soil and Water Conservation, Dehradun, Uttarakhand 248195