Environmental Migrant - Definition and Concept

Definition and Concept

The term "environmental refugee" was first proposed by Lester Brown in 1976, since then there has been a proliferation in the use of the term at which "environmental migrant" and a cluster of similar categories, including "forced environmental migrant", "environmentally motivated migrant", "climate refugee", "climate change refugee", "environmentally displaced person (EDP)", "disaster refugee", "environmental displacee", "eco-refugee", "ecologically displaced person" and "environmental-refugee-to-be (ERTB)". have been utilized. The differences between these terms are less important than what they have in common: they all suggest that there is a determinable relationship between environmental drivers and human migration which is analytically useful, policy-relevant and possibly grounds for the expansion of refugee law.

Under the United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees of 1951, a refugee is more narrowly defined (in Article 1A) as a person who "owing to a 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 to or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country". While the concept of a refugee was expanded by the Convention's 1967 Protocol and by regional conventions in Africa and Latin America to include persons who had fled war or other violence in their home country, in its present state the convention does not provide long-term legal protection to refugees due to environmental change.

The International Organisation for Migration proposes the following definition for environmental migrants:

"Environmental migrants are persons or groups of persons who, for compelling reasons of sudden or progressive changes in the environment that adversely affect their lives or living conditions, are obliged to leave their habitual homes, or choose to do so, either temporarily or permanently, and who move either within their country or abroad."

The term climate refugees refers to the subset of environmental migrants forced to move due to "due to sudden or gradual alterations in their natural environment related to at least one of three impacts of climate change: sea-level rise, extreme weather events, and drought and water scarcity" (Global Governance Project 2012).

However, there is yet to be a universally accepted definition of "environmental migration" or "climate refugee". Thus, The International Organization for Migration formulated a working definition which encompasses the complexity of the topic.

This working definition recognizes that

• Environmental migrants are not only those displaced by the environmental event but also those who migration is triggered by deteriorating environmental conditions
• Environmentally induced movement can take place within as well as across international borders;
• It can be both long and short term; and
• Population movements triggered by environmental forces can be forced as well as a matter of choice