Environmental Migration Research Articles

Climate refugees or labour migrants? Climate reductive translations of women’s migration from coastal Bangladesh

ABSTRACT Climate reductive translations of migration attract international attention, but result in three problematic misreadings of Bangladesh’s socioecological landscape. First, attributing migration to climate change misreads coastal vulnerabilities and the importance of migration as a gendered livelihood strategy to deal with rural precarity and debt- both in the past and present. Second, misreading migration caused by brackish tiger-prawn cultivation, infrastructure-related waterlogging and riverbank erosion as ‘climate-induced’ hinders a discussion of long-term solutions for rural underemployment, salinisation, siltation and land loss. Lastly, framing climate change as causing ‘gendered displacement’ ignores the importance of affective kinship relations in shaping single women’s migration choices.

A capital theory approach to migrants' views and engagement with climate adaptation in the region of origin: A qualitative study in Belgium

AbstractCombining insights from migration and climate adaptation studies, this study examines how migrants living in Belgium contribute to climate adaptation in their region of origin, based on 29 qualitative interviews with migrants in Belgium. The findings varied considerably, depending on the region of origin, the main driver of migration and the possibility of returning. The results show that both the knowledge and capacity to contribute to climate adaptation in the region of origin depends on the forms and degrees of capital individuals have, both in the immigrant country and region of origin. Migrants with more cultural capital in the region of origin had more transnational bonding and bridging ties, resulting in more opportunities to contribute to the development of the region. However, as many of the interviewees originated from urban areas, their actions were oriented more towards waste, pollution and life domains other than climate adaptation. This contrasts with migrants with less formal cultural capital. Due to specific living conditions, they were more familiar with local climate impacts. Their transnational bonding social ties increased this knowledge and familiarity with the need for climate adaptation. Nevertheless, the high costs of integration into the immigrant society and a lack of cultural and economic capital limits this group's capacity to contribute to climate adaptation initiatives in the region of origin. Bringing the concept of ‘migrant capital’ into the study of climate adaptation fills a gap in the literature on environmental migration, and especially engages with discourses that frame migration as an adaptation strategy.

Cognizing climate refugees and proposing measures for their relief

There are several instances around the world where people have been forced to migrate due to numerous issues, inclusive of the political circumstances, terrorism, famines. One of the key issue which happens to be missing out from this bracket is the migration induced by the climate. If all the aforementioned earlier can cause force migrations, then it is possible that climate change can also induce forced migration. This paper will discuss the problems faced by the climate refugees in the current world, as this paper will showcase the manner in which the climate refugees have often been neglected from the focal point. It is observed that the Global North had often neglected to take the climate refugees as a part of their refugee system and its laws, this had left a massive void for these refugees, who had come seeking refuge under extraneous circumstances, which they had been facing and led to their migration from their homes domestically/internationally. Climate Refugees and their problems have often been deemed to be under an ambiguous conception, due to misunderstandings by several researchers. Therefore, the paper will shed light on the ambiguous concepts elaborate on the International Treaties and their take on the climate refugees. The paper highlights the vital need for recognition of people displaced by environmental crises and the inhumanity of ignoring them in the conventional refugee systems.

Aarey conservation: A multifaceted opportunity for climate mitigation in an urban setting

Abstract Citizens of the world are bracing themselves to combat and mitigate cataclysmic climate crisis. Recurrent climate accidents are leaving behind millions of climate refugees, who flock to urban centers in search of safety and security. Overcrowded metropolitan cities are highly vulnerable due to their high human densities and absolute numbers of residents and migrants. A well-connected network of urban green zones (UGZs) provides multiple values that enable sustainable climate mitigation and adaptation. The metropolis of Mumbai, with over 24 million humans (Mumbaikars), is fortunate to also have a network of large UGZs and protected areas (PAs), viz. Sanjay Gandhi National Park, Aarey Milk Colony (AMC), Tungareshwar, Thane, Tansa, and Karnala Wildlife Sanctuaries, along with mangrove forests and public parks. However, most PAs restrict entry and climate mitigation actions. AMC, spread over 12.5 km2 provides a unique “mosaic” landscape, inhabited by indigenous communities (Warli and Mahadev Koli), locals, and migrants. The hills, farms, artificial meadows, and built-up complexes, with a good road network and proximity to Mumbai’s suburbs, provide numerous opportunities to achieve the 17 sustainable development goals set out by members of the United Nations Conference of the Parties. The path to achieve climate and resource stability, in the economic capital of the nation, is a precarious one and needs planning and engagement of all stakeholders. Long-term protection of AMC will provide socioeconomic equity as well as ecological and health security to current and future generations of Mumbaikars.

Flemish Immigration and Geoffrey of Monmouth's De gestis Britonum

Flemish Immigration and Geoffrey of Monmouth's <i>De gestis Britonum</i>

Explaining Climate Change Induced Human Mobility: Revisiting Traditional and Emerging Migration Theories in the Wake of Regularising Climate Change Induced Human Mobility under International Law

The term “environmental refugees” was used by the United Nations Environmental Program in 1985, drawing the international community’s attention to environmentally induced human mobility for the first time. Almost 40 years on, migration experts, lawyers as well as the international community struggle to define and to conceptualise an imminent phenomenon. Migration studies as such are still struggling for their own emancipation among other fields of social sciences, and now migration experts are challenged with a novel social phenomenon, climate change induced human mobility. In fact, environmentally induced human mobility is not a new phenomenon, it is merely a novel research area. In this article, I will collect and summarise traditional and emerging migration theories and concepts, in order to establish whether climate change induced human mobility may be interpreted by any of these theories at all, or if not, how could these be adapted to understand climate change induced human mobility.

Book Review: Environmental justice for climate refugees

Book Review: Environmental justice for climate refugees

SCIENTIFIC DISCOURSE IN THE CONTEXT OF THE CONCEPT "ENVIRONMENTAL MIGRATION” IN INTERNATIONAL DOCUMENTS

This article is devoted to the definition of the term "environmental migration" and related concepts such as "climate migration", "environmental migrant" and "climate refugee". Particular attention is paid to current international documents, as well as the work of domestic and foreign researchers in this field. The authors made an attempt to identify the main stages in the formation of the terms under study, as well as to focus on the need to develop a unified definition of the concepts under study at the present stage in order to simplify many migration issues both within the country and abroad due to environmental factors. Based on the analysis, the article concludes that the undeveloped generally accepted interpretation of the analyzed terms significantly complicates the processes of population movement due to environmentally unfavorable reasons, however, at the present stage, among the works of researchers, there are more and more publications with a review of existing problems in this area. This circumstance allows us to speak about a certain progress in the formation of a holistic definition.

Floating Cities: A Solution for Climate Refugees?

Floating Cities: A Solution for Climate Refugees?

Global health, climate change and migration: The need for recognition of “climate refugees”

Global health, climate change and migration: The need for recognition of “climate refugees”

Indigenous Removal and (Un)Recognition in the Plantationocene: Documenting Louisiana's Rising Waters

ABSTRACT: In the 2012 documentary, My Louisiana Love , United Houma Nation (UHN) artist and activist Monique Verdin shares maps that display how her tribe was forced into the wetlands of south Louisiana by settler colonialism (5:40-6:00). In Can't Stop the Water (2014), a documentary about the Isle de Jean Charles Band of Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw (BCC), the tribe dubbed America's "first climate refugees" by The New York Times , Chief Albert Naquin describes his community as made up of "refugees from the Trail of Tears" (4:29-4:35). The issues of subsidence, seawater intrusion from canals dug by gas and oil companies, and rising waters impact all of south Louisiana's residents, yet the state's coastal Indigenous peoples whose cultures and economies are directly tied to the diminishing land are most immediately affected. My Louisiana Love and Can't Stop the Water address these issues within the Indigenous communities at the center of their narratives, communities with a legacy of displacement directly resulting from Plantationocene practices who are forced to consider relocation again in the near future. These documentaries unblinkingly indict the petroleum industry, underscoring the ways it has participated in the destruction of the Gulf Coast with little involvement in its restoration. This article analyzes the efficacy of the films in portraying the challenges faced by their communities and the activism each work depicts and engenders, as well as illuminates the role that southeastern Indigenous Louisianans have played and continue to play in the Plantationocene.

Indigenous Removal and (Un)Recognition in the Plantationocene: Documenting Louisiana's Rising Waters

ABSTRACT: In the 2012 documentary, My Louisiana Love , United Houma Nation (UHN) artist and activist Monique Verdin shares maps that display how her tribe was forced into the wetlands of south Louisiana by settler colonialism (5:40-6:00). In Can't Stop the Water (2014), a documentary about the Isle de Jean Charles Band of Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw (BCC), the tribe dubbed America's "first climate refugees" by The New York Times , Chief Albert Naquin describes his community as made up of "refugees from the Trail of Tears" (4:29-4:35). The issues of subsidence, seawater intrusion from canals dug by gas and oil companies, and rising waters impact all of south Louisiana's residents, yet the state's coastal Indigenous peoples whose cultures and economies are directly tied to the diminishing land are most immediately affected. My Louisiana Love and Can't Stop the Water address these issues within the Indigenous communities at the center of their narratives, communities with a legacy of displacement directly resulting from Plantationocene practices who are forced to consider relocation again in the near future. These documentaries unblinkingly indict the petroleum industry, underscoring the ways it has participated in the destruction of the Gulf Coast with little involvement in its restoration. This article analyzes the efficacy of the films in portraying the challenges faced by their communities and the activism each work depicts and engenders, as well as illuminates the role that southeastern Indigenous Louisianans have played and continue to play in the Plantationocene.

Ecosystem People, Biosphere People, Ecological Refugees

One may assign people to three broad categories from an ecological perspective. Ecosystem people meet the bulk of their resource requirements from a limited area near their habitation through gathering or low-input agriculture and animal husbandry. Biosphere people enjoy access to resources garnered from the entire biosphere and made available through markets, while ecological refugees are people that have lost access to their traditional base of natural resources yet have very limited access to resources through markets. In India today the ever-growing pressure of biosphere people is converting an increasingly large proportion of ecosystem people into ecological refugees.

Migration and livelihood constellations: Assessing common themes in the face of environmental change in Somalia and amongAgro‐Pastoralpeoples

AbstractResearch on migration has become more challenging due to at least four factors: (1) more complex migration traditions; (2) the development of migration economies that engage many types of migrants from ever more social and cultural backgrounds; (3) increasing likelihood of climate change‐driven environmental migration; and (4) increasing likelihood of conflict‐based migration in some contexts. These developments have shaken economic theories of migration and have encouraged interdisciplinary, methodologically mixed, qualitative and quantitative research and analysis. From a review of the literature, we have gleaned 11 common themes about environmental, economic and conflict migration that we differentiate by process (migration behaviours that are still evolving) and patterns (migration behaviours that have become customary). We then consider how positive and negative dimensions of migration can be captured and represented with close attention to livelihood constellations (multiple economic activities combined by individuals, households and families). Finally, focusing on Somalia and agro‐pastoral peoples generally, where recent environmental and conflict migration have been added to decades of economic migration and centuries of seasonal, environmental migration associated with pastoralism, we combine historical and qualitative work to demonstrate the value of a livelihood constellation perspective.

Planetary Ethics: Rereading Seyla Benhabib in the Age of Climate Refugees

In the Anthropocene, humans are drastically impacting the Earth system. Though the numbers are disputed, millions of climate refugees might soon appear worldwide due to, for example, rising sea levels. To better tackle these intertwined ecological and migrational crises, I expand on Seyla Benhabib’s theoretical legacy by discerning within it a multidimensional framework containing mutually intersecting moral, legal, and political dimensions. Within this framework, I argue, Benhabib approaches the issue of climate refugees from three different yet supplementary discourses. From her engagement with discourses on cosmopolitanism and global justice, she endorses reforming the Refugee Convention to include climate refugees. From her contribution to discourses on human rights and human dignity, Benhabib opens the door for a human right to the environment to better protect climate refugees. Against the backdrop of her longstanding work to reformulate a feminist and critical-theoretical discourse ethics, I argue, Benhabib puts forward an ecocentric planetary ethics that embraces climate refugees and the rest of nature. In all, I conclude that Benhabib’s legacy demonstrates the need for a multidimensional approach to climate refugees in times of ecocrisis.

Unveiling the interaction mechanism between facet-dependent pyrite nanoparticles and Cr(VI) under anaerobic environment: adsorption, redox, and phase transformation

The environmental migration and bioavailability of Hexavalent chromium (Cr(VI)) could be affected by facet-dependent pyrite (FeS2) existing in soils and sediments. Conversely, the occurrence state of facet-dependent FeS2 might also be influenced by Cr(VI). However, the complex interactive mechanism at the solid–liquid interface between facet-dependent FeS2 and Cr(VI) still remained ambiguous. Herein, FeS2 nanobelts, FeS2 nanosheets, and FeS2 nanocubes with corresponding dominant facets of (−110), (001), (100)/(210) were prepared. The adsorption and reduction experimental results reflected that Cr(VI) species were predominantly adsorbed and a portion of them was reduced to Cr(III) at the FeS2 interfaces. In particular, the adsorption efficiency of Cr(VI) on (001) facet was 1.39 and 4.69 times than those on (−110) and (100)+(210) facets, respectively. The results of in situ Attenuated Total Reflectance Fourier Transform Infrared spectroscopy (ATR-FTIR) measurements and Density Functional Theory (DFT) calculations suggested that bidentate binuclear (BB) coordinated chromates were generated on the (001) facet while monodentate mononuclear (MM) coordinated chromates were formed on (−110), (100), and (210) facets. Due to the stronger adsorption energy and more stable coordination mode of BB for Cr(VI) species on (001) facet, FeS2 NS exhibited higher efficiency of Cr(VI) removal and reduction compared with FeS2 NB and FeS2 NC. In addition, partial FeS2 particles were proved to be transformed to goethite under the effect of Cr(VI). Owing to the stronger adsorption of Cr(VI) species on (001) facet, FeS2 NS also had a faster phase transformation rate than FeS2 NB and FeS2 NC. Above results all reflected the good structure–reactivity relationships between the FeS2 facets and the Cr(VI) removal efficiency as well as the phase transformation of FeS2 particles.

The evolution of Aotearoa New Zealand's policy discourses on Pacific climate mobilities from 2006–2021

In 2006 New Zealand government officials found themselves facing a barrage of enquiries arising from an erroneous claim contained in Al Gore's Academy Award-winning climate change documentary An Inconvenient Truth. The documentary suggested that the government of Aotearoa had agreed to take “all climate refugees” from Tuvalu, an archipelago of nine atolls and coral-reef islands in the South Pacific, as part of a planned response to climate change. At the time, New Zealand did not have any plan, or indeed any intention to create a plan, for addressing climate-induced displacement. The ensuing 15 years saw Aotearoa's official response evolve from one of “correcting misperceptions about New Zealand's position on climate-induced migration” to an adaptive development approach focused on Pacific-led solutions. This paper traces the evolution of that approach through a series of official reviews, focusing on the discursive frames and narratives that were employed by officials and government representatives. The current New Zealand government has expressed a desire to play a role in the development of world-leading approaches to climate-induced mobilities within the region, whilst it also seeks to avoid establishing overly broad policy precedents on climate migration that could apply beyond the Pacific. The paper discusses some of the avenues being explored by government departments, in particular the potential for existing temporary migrant programs to be developed into schemes that actively support an adaptive development framework in response to climate-related mobilities. We consider the range of possible solutions that could be contained within such a response, the opportunities for mutually beneficial approaches and the challenges that they would pose to long-accepted norms and processes embedded in the country's current immigration programs.

Sustainable refugee camp design in the Dalhamyie settlement (Bekaa, Lebanon) for climate change context

Emergency shelters are often designed to be of temporary nature but end up adopting a more permanent nature in becoming informal settlements. On one hand, these settlements suffer from the conflicts and environmental pressures. On the other hand, they also bear the inadequacies of services and facilities. This adds to the vulnerability of the refugee population to climatic extremes and environmental extremes along with a low quality of life. The present study aims to identify the pressures both environmental and socio-economic on a refugee camp in the Dalhamyie settlement in Bekaa, Lebanon and design a resilient model which address both internal and external risks. We propose a master plan as a suggested guideline representing a preliminary design umbrella plan that may be updated and altered depending on the population of the community, the site's limitations, and the general availability of resources. To help the local refugees become more resilient and self-sufficient in times of crisis, recommendations are here presented are not strict structural plans but rather a strategic, data-driven collection of actions. With the increasing mental stress that refugees experience, the idea of resilience at all levels is needed to lessen and reinforce the constant environmental, physical, and economic threat that they are subjected to. Residential zoning has been detailed out with respect to the form, structure and assembling of components along with cluster planning within the settlement. Recommendations are not a rigid structural plan but a strategic, data driven set of actions that can be implemented by the local refugee community in order to achieve greater resilience and self-sustainability during crisis situations. Such model is applicable with modifications for other emergency settlements also with varying risk factors. The proposed model addresses the challenges and the multiple risks that the people are exposed to present a framework that can lead to better quality of life in temporary settlements. With more climate refugees, conflict driven refugees and internal refugees, absence of such models was a gap and the authors have tried to build the same through one case study.

From conflict to climate: refugees to IDPs (Internally Displaced Persons) in the Bay of Bengal

ABSTRACT The Rohingya refugees rehabilitated in Bangladesh present a unique case bearing human and environmental security cross complications. Forced to flee from Myanmar due to military atrocities and ethnic violence, they took refuge in neighboring Bangladesh from 2017 onwards. These refugees are standing at the crossroads of converting from Forcibly Displaced Myanmar Nationals (FDMNs) to potential climate refugees in the near future due to their rehabilitation in the environmentally sensitive island of Bhasan Char, which is regularly ravaged by cyclones, sea level rise and other climate challenges. This paper argues that Bangladesh is a case study of paradoxical human settlement. On the one hand, the host country is giving refuge to conflict victims while, at the same time, it is triggering climate-induced displacement within their own country. From conflict-ridden areas to climate-sensitive zones, such rehabilitation of refugees invites deeper crises and calls for immediate policy attention.

Data embodiment: approaching the body as a choreographic medium for performing abstract data

ABSTRACT The motivation to make information more accessible in data communication – physically to the senses and culturally to different audiences – has led designers to experiment, for example, in data physicalization and data sonification. Experimentation overlapping data communication and the performance arts suggests another practice is emerging. Calling it data embodiment, I define the term as a communicative and artistic method that approaches the body as a choreographic medium to physicalize and perform abstract data. The intent of this paper is to sufficiently delineate the space where bodily movement and abstract data have begun to intermingle across several milieu under the concept. The paper begins by contextualizing data embodiment in design, then continues by observing how choreographers have previously approached dance as data, and finishes with a case study where an environmental migration dataset is choreographed. A brief section on human-centered datasets and the surveillant technologies that produce them peppers the overarching discussion on bodily movement and abstract data. By reconstituting data in time and space, especially in the context of performance, otherwise sterile datasets are shown to become more physically and culturally accessible as well as aesthetically expressive.