Syria’s woes paint picture of environmental migration to come
An article in AlertNet by Jacob Park entitled “Climate Conversations – Syria’s woes paint picture of environmental migration to come” outlines the devastating drought that has gripped Syria since 2006 and reportedly driven more than 1.5 million people from the countryside to cities in search for food and economic normality, a rarely reported issue against the backdrop of ongoing political unrest in Syria.
The situation in Syria, says Park, is in many ways a microcosm of an issue that the international community will be confronting in the future: what can be done about migration and other related complex humanitarian problems brought on by climate change and water scarcity concerns?
The International Organisation for Migration estimates that there are now several million “environmental migrants” worldwide, and that this “number will rise to tens of millions within the next 20 years, or hundreds of millions within the next 50 years”.
Many questions exist about climate change- and resource scarcity-induced human migration, including whether migrants displaced by climate change deserve different or special legal protection under international law.
The modern conception of what subsequently became known as climate change-induced migration and displacement began in the mid-1970s, with a publication on global population co-authored by Lester Brown, founder of the Worldwatch Institute.
The ACT session on population displacement is scheduled for 2013, and will study urgent considerations for Canada and other countries likely to become hosts to refugees or displaced people within their own borders, including policy issues such as governance, employment impacts, community services, health care and housing.
Related posts:
- “Towards Recognition” – a fantastic blog raising awareness about environmental migrants
- Environmental and Economic Disaster Looms Over Shatt al Arab River
- UN projects 50 Million Environmental Refugees by 2020
- Reports Paint Pictures of the Future of US Food and Water Supply
- Study predicts major increase in Mexican migrants to the US due to climate change
So-called environmentally induced migration is multi-level problem. According to Essam El-Hinnawi definition form 1985 environmental refugees as ―those people who have been forced to leave their traditional habitat, temporarily or permanently, because of a marked environmental disruption (natural or triggered by people) that jeopardised their existence and/or seriously affected the quality of their life. The fundamental distinction between `environmental migrants` and `environmental refugees` is a standpoint of contemporsry studies in EDPs.
According to Bogumil Terminski it seems reasonable to distinguish the general category of environmental migrants from the more specific (subordinate to it) category of environmental refugees.
Environmental migrants, therefore, are persons making a short-lived, cyclical, or longerterm change of residence, of a voluntary or forced character, due to specific environmental factors. Environmental refugees form a specific type of environmental migrant.
Environmental refugees, therefore, are persons compelled to spontaneous, short-lived, cyclical, or longer-term changes of residence due to sudden or gradually worsening changes in environmental factors important to their living, which may be of either a short-term or an irreversible character.