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CALL TO PROTECT ENVIRONMENTAL REFUGEES: CRISIS SET TO GROW
‘HOMES-FOR-LIFESTYLES’ SCANDAL CALLS FOR RECOGNITION AND PROTECTION OF PEOPLE FORCED TO FLEE BY EXTREME ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS
Environmental refugees should be officially recognised and protected by the international community says a new report by nef – the new economics foundation, launched today, 30th September, 2003. It argues that in a world of growing interdependency – where environmental problems have no respect for borders and nation states – such a move is an essential response to a mounting and unavoidable crisis.
Even conservative estimates for the progress of global warming suggest that many millions will be forced to move due to environmental causes in coming years. Global warming, in particular, is set to drastically increase the problem. Managing the issue has been hampered to date by the failure of the international community to properly monitor environmental refugees.
Report co-author Andrew Simms said, ‘Hysteria and hypocrisy walk in the footsteps of refugees and migrants. The paranoia of wealthy countries is deeply ironic. Their carbon intensive lifestyles are driving global warming, which is likely to become the largest single factor forcing people to flee their homes around the world. There is an obligation on the nations most responsible for historic greenhouse gas emissions, Europe and North America, to make sure that environmental refugees are recognised and protected.
‘We face a ‘homes-for-lifestyles’ scandal, in which people in poor, vulnerable countries pay with their homes for our lifestyles. The problem will not go away.
We either manage it responsibly or it will manage us. It is neither morally nor legally justifiable for the burden to fall on poor countries.
‘Yet whilst continuing to pollute the globe, the world’s wealthy are pulling up the drawbridge on refugees. This is a question of justice in adaptation to climate change.’
One of the most recent estimates of the problem suggested that 25 million people worldwide were uprooted for environmental reasons – compared to 22 million displaced by civil wars and persecution. Another estimate suggests that by the year 2050, there could be 150 million displaced by a cocktail of ecological ‘push factors’.
However, the Geneva Convention on Refugees contains no explicit clause to acknowledge their plight. Without a planned approach to managing the environmental refugee crisis, the report argues, there will be chaos, avoidable suffering and a backlash against innocent victims of global environmental degradation.
Molly Conisbee added, ‘What we are proposing is an overdue correction to a terrible oversight by the international community: a solution to a massive global problem. The most vulnerable of people – often uprooted from their homes and livelihoods through no fault of their own – must be given basic dignity, rights and protection. This is a global problem that demands a global solution – and can only be tackled by the wealthy polluting nations acknowledging their role in creating this problem.’
The report recommends:
- Updating the Geneva Convention to give environmental refugees the full protection of environmental law, or…
- Writing a new Convention to acknowledge the number of people whose lives are being destroyed by current global environmental policies
- Compensation for ecological debts to clarify the financial and environmental obligations of ‘over polluting’ countries, particularly the contribution they should make to climate-related problems such as the growth in environmental refugee numbers.
***Event tonight to launch the report: ‘Environmental refugees: the case for recognition’
7pm on Tuesday, 30th September, at the ICA, the Mall, SW1. Speakers include:
Simon Taylor of UNHCR, Professor Richard Black of Sussex University, Andrew Simms of the New Economics Foundation and author / comedian Robert Newman.
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