Refugees and environment
Tuesday, 14 April 2009
Mohammad Rajja
More often than not, when one writes on the subject of refugees one finds onself in an angry mood. The anger is over the degrading treatment which is handed out to the refugees. One is also angry at the arbitrary dispersal policy, which runs against the best practice and which leaves often vulnerable people at a heightened risk of racist attack and social exclusion: combating that is a priority social issue. Our "preclusion" policy makes us furious.
On the other hand, when one has to write about that state of the world, our environment in general one at times feels like crying. The magnitude of the problems facing us, and our totally inadequate response can be truly depressing. An UN survey estimates that about a third of the total land area of our beautiful planet is in some stage of becoming desert-land. Less than 1.0% of the world's water is fresh water and there are increasing problems concerning supply and quality due to factors such as agricultural and industrial pollution.
Climate change is another factor: its symptoms are increasingly erratic and extreme weather conditions which, among other things, make the growing of crops less predictable -- you only have to think of the waterlogged fields in the autumn and early spring to remember the losses suffered by our arable farmers -- the vegetables rotting in the ground. All of this, of course, affects humans too.
On the subject of 150 million people live in the areas affected by desertification.
Some experts predict that up to 110 million of them could be displaced in the next twenty years. The UN estimates that soil degradation affects the livelihood of more than one billion people: that's about one in six of the world's population.
Approximately two out of every six people face shortages and other problems with water: over the next 21 years this could rise until two-thirds of an even larger population face problems. The World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates that poor drinking water alone kills 25 million people a year. Groundwater in Bangladesh is contaminated with arsenic in the majority of the country (85%) - about 75 million people are at risk.
The data are staggering, aren't they? You see why it can become so depressing. And that's without climate change. Government estimates in China put climate change displacement at 30 million people. Think of the potential effect in Europe, as sea levels rise around our low-lying areas in East Anglia and Essex, along the Dutch and Danish coasts and the glaciers melt in the Alps. We have built on much of that land - and some of what we have built is chemical plant and nuclear power stations.
It is difficult to estimate the number of environmental refugees in the world today: they don't count in official figures as they do not fall under the protection of the UN and in general they are not covered by refugee conventions or agreements.
The Red Cross has said: natural disasters in 1998 created more refugees than wars or other armed conflicts. Declining soil fertility, drought, flooding and deforestation drove 25 million "environmental refugees" from their land and into vulnerable squatter communities of crowded cities: 58% of the total refugee population world-wide (10 million recognised, 15 million unrecognised).
Some estimates predict that by 2051, climate change will have increased the number of environmental refugees to 150 million.
What the Red Cross figures also demonstrate is that environmental degradation has a greater effect on the already poor and vulnerable. Environmental instability also has a spin-off effect on political stability. Any government that cannot feed its people is vulnerable and often repressive. Think of the conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians: many of the aquifers are in the West Bank and the water is primarily used for Israeli agriculture and development. Look at the land issue in Brazil, where we see deforestation as the direct result of government policy concerning land use and the displacement of people.
Environmental problems are all too often the result of political decisions. Those decisions can be made thousands of miles away - the USA and the European Union (EU) both produce over 20% each of the world's climate change gases. This writer sees no signs of either body being prepared to take the millions of Bangladeshis who will be displaced if they aren't drowned first by rising sea levels.
We all know that Afghanistan is still facing drought, failed harvests, landmines that make stretches of land unusable etc., let alone what we think of the Taliban.
If we do not officially recognise that there is such as a person as "an environmental refugee" -- maybe someone with a well-founded fear of dying due to lack of basic resources food and water , but we can argue about the definition , we have no responsibility for them. We can believe that they have chosen to leave because they simply want a higher standard of living and they can do that somewhere else. If they are a refugee, we have responsibilities and they have rights.
Can we use the same systems to implement such a status? This writer thinks it depends on geography, numbers and the institutional infrastructure and he also thinks there is a need to look at this on a regional basis.
If sufficient member states decide that there is a particular emergency, then they will operate a sharing of the responsibility by spreading the numbers of people, backed by cash from the Refugee Fund, amongst the member states prepared to take them. These people are then granted a particular status and benefits attached to that.
This is fine but it assumes that such an influx will come from a third country.
We have to realise that you have to work with "countries of origin" as it is put to deal with the factors that cause involuntary migration.
The key has to be prevention. We have to reduce the pressures on our environment and we don't just do that by recycling our bottles. We have to look much deeper.
There must be discussion on "common asylum and immigration policies" in every country.
We have to keep in my mind about our trade policies, our export-dumping subsidies and the support our governments give to companies for arms, building dams, resource extraction, and nuclear energy - a whole long list of things.
This writer thinks it is essential that all of us who care about many of the issues which create refugees consider carefully what we want from world leaders at the Conference. We need a two-fold approach which aims to reduce the causes and care for the sufferers.
This writer is a student of Gono Bishwabidyalay, Gsvmc, Savar, Dhaka and can be reached at arnold_raza@yahoo.com
More often than not, when one writes on the subject of refugees one finds onself in an angry mood. The anger is over the degrading treatment which is handed out to the refugees. One is also angry at the arbitrary dispersal policy, which runs against the best practice and which leaves often vulnerable people at a heightened risk of racist attack and social exclusion: combating that is a priority social issue. Our "preclusion" policy makes us furious.
On the other hand, when one has to write about that state of the world, our environment in general one at times feels like crying. The magnitude of the problems facing us, and our totally inadequate response can be truly depressing. An UN survey estimates that about a third of the total land area of our beautiful planet is in some stage of becoming desert-land. Less than 1.0% of the world's water is fresh water and there are increasing problems concerning supply and quality due to factors such as agricultural and industrial pollution.
Climate change is another factor: its symptoms are increasingly erratic and extreme weather conditions which, among other things, make the growing of crops less predictable -- you only have to think of the waterlogged fields in the autumn and early spring to remember the losses suffered by our arable farmers -- the vegetables rotting in the ground. All of this, of course, affects humans too.
On the subject of 150 million people live in the areas affected by desertification.
Some experts predict that up to 110 million of them could be displaced in the next twenty years. The UN estimates that soil degradation affects the livelihood of more than one billion people: that's about one in six of the world's population.
Approximately two out of every six people face shortages and other problems with water: over the next 21 years this could rise until two-thirds of an even larger population face problems. The World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates that poor drinking water alone kills 25 million people a year. Groundwater in Bangladesh is contaminated with arsenic in the majority of the country (85%) - about 75 million people are at risk.
The data are staggering, aren't they? You see why it can become so depressing. And that's without climate change. Government estimates in China put climate change displacement at 30 million people. Think of the potential effect in Europe, as sea levels rise around our low-lying areas in East Anglia and Essex, along the Dutch and Danish coasts and the glaciers melt in the Alps. We have built on much of that land - and some of what we have built is chemical plant and nuclear power stations.
It is difficult to estimate the number of environmental refugees in the world today: they don't count in official figures as they do not fall under the protection of the UN and in general they are not covered by refugee conventions or agreements.
The Red Cross has said: natural disasters in 1998 created more refugees than wars or other armed conflicts. Declining soil fertility, drought, flooding and deforestation drove 25 million "environmental refugees" from their land and into vulnerable squatter communities of crowded cities: 58% of the total refugee population world-wide (10 million recognised, 15 million unrecognised).
Some estimates predict that by 2051, climate change will have increased the number of environmental refugees to 150 million.
What the Red Cross figures also demonstrate is that environmental degradation has a greater effect on the already poor and vulnerable. Environmental instability also has a spin-off effect on political stability. Any government that cannot feed its people is vulnerable and often repressive. Think of the conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians: many of the aquifers are in the West Bank and the water is primarily used for Israeli agriculture and development. Look at the land issue in Brazil, where we see deforestation as the direct result of government policy concerning land use and the displacement of people.
Environmental problems are all too often the result of political decisions. Those decisions can be made thousands of miles away - the USA and the European Union (EU) both produce over 20% each of the world's climate change gases. This writer sees no signs of either body being prepared to take the millions of Bangladeshis who will be displaced if they aren't drowned first by rising sea levels.
We all know that Afghanistan is still facing drought, failed harvests, landmines that make stretches of land unusable etc., let alone what we think of the Taliban.
If we do not officially recognise that there is such as a person as "an environmental refugee" -- maybe someone with a well-founded fear of dying due to lack of basic resources food and water , but we can argue about the definition , we have no responsibility for them. We can believe that they have chosen to leave because they simply want a higher standard of living and they can do that somewhere else. If they are a refugee, we have responsibilities and they have rights.
Can we use the same systems to implement such a status? This writer thinks it depends on geography, numbers and the institutional infrastructure and he also thinks there is a need to look at this on a regional basis.
If sufficient member states decide that there is a particular emergency, then they will operate a sharing of the responsibility by spreading the numbers of people, backed by cash from the Refugee Fund, amongst the member states prepared to take them. These people are then granted a particular status and benefits attached to that.
This is fine but it assumes that such an influx will come from a third country.
We have to realise that you have to work with "countries of origin" as it is put to deal with the factors that cause involuntary migration.
The key has to be prevention. We have to reduce the pressures on our environment and we don't just do that by recycling our bottles. We have to look much deeper.
There must be discussion on "common asylum and immigration policies" in every country.
We have to keep in my mind about our trade policies, our export-dumping subsidies and the support our governments give to companies for arms, building dams, resource extraction, and nuclear energy - a whole long list of things.
This writer thinks it is essential that all of us who care about many of the issues which create refugees consider carefully what we want from world leaders at the Conference. We need a two-fold approach which aims to reduce the causes and care for the sufferers.
This writer is a student of Gono Bishwabidyalay, Gsvmc, Savar, Dhaka and can be reached at arnold_raza@yahoo.com