RSP DOCUMENTATION CENTRE ENVIRONMENT AND FORCED MIGRATION AREVIEW BY W. FRANKLIN G. CARDY DEPUTY ASSISTANT EXECUTTVEDIRECTOR, ENVIRONMENTMANAGEMENTPROGRAMME DIRECTOR, DESERTIFICATIONCONTROL PROGRAMME UNITED NATIONS ENVIRONMENT PROGRAMME NAIROBI KENYA FOR THE LAST PLENARY SESSION " NEW DIRECTIONS IN RESEARCH ON FORCED MIGRATION " OF THE THE FOURTH INTERNATIONAL RESEARCH AND ADVISORY PANEL CONFERENCE SOMERVILLE COLLEGE, UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD JANUARYS-8 1994 HHininii 302837716. ENVIRONMENT AND FORCED MIGRATION AREVIEW ByFranklin Cardy, UNEP. Nairobi Introduction The Causes The numbers involved Security issues Environmental Impacts The Research Needs The Root Causes The Special Needs of the Migrants Practical Approaches for Action Influencing Decision Makers Planning The Search for Security Minimise Environmental Impacts Clarify Environmental Impacts Opportunities for Post-Impact Studies The Search for "New Paradigms" of Development. Conclusions for the future ENVIRONMENT AND FORCED MIGRATION AREVIEW By Franklin Cardy, UNEP. Nairobi Introduction We are all migrants or descendants of migrants. According to the best information we have at present, our common ancestors came from East Africa. A glance at the history of the development of mankind shows a consistent spreading of our homelands, a widening of our influence and a consolidation of our impact into every corner of the globe. Only in the Antarctic are we still trying to establish our hold. Elsewhere we have attempted to scrape a living from every corner of the globe's land mass. We have not always been successful; we have not achieved sustainability of settlements everywhere in the past; we have suffered reversals as the result of climate fluctuations and as a result of over-exploitation of the environment by ourselves. When reversals occurred, when the local conditions became intolerable, for whatever reason, we either overcame the obstacles or we migrated to somewhere else. There always has been somewhere else to go to - at least in the global sense; and there still is room on the globe and resources available to maintain a larger population. But not always where they are needed. And they are being depleted rapidly by us. And we are increasing rapidly as a result. Never before have so many people been living on the globe. There are more people alive now than the total of all the people who have lived and died in the two million or so years since modem man appeared. The pressures for migration have never been so great; and the pressures that result from migrations have never been so challenging. The first day of this conference was filled with a review of the history of recent and current migrations from all over the world and later papers looked in detail at some of the impacts of this movement. This paper addresses the relationship between environment and migration; that is to say, both the environmental causes of migration and the environmental effects of migration. The paper begins with a review of recent work on the issues and the scope of the problem and then looks at the subject within the context of the session heading: New directions in Research on Forced Migration. The author gratefully acknowledges the various recent publications that he has been able to draw on. This is an expanding area of concern which has been recognised for less than a decade. The paper tends to focus on the longer term and more intractable of the problems resulting from gradually increasing stress on the environment, especially in the dry lands of the Third World. The Causes The environment is where we live and our first priorities are always to find and preserve an adequate environment for survival. If we cannot live in one location we move and try elsewhere. If someone else is already there, we may threaten them and their environment and have to compete for their resources . Stress, unrest, conflict and even war can easily develop and frequently result in further migration. These are the frequent consequences of environmental stress, degradation, inadequacy or change (such as drought); but they can occur for other reasons and there is virtually no rigorous data on the numbers of environmental migrants in the world, as opposed to those resulting from other causes. The title "Environmental Refugee" seems to have been coined by Essam El-Hinnawi in the United Nations Environment Programme's publication of the same name (UNEP 1985). Since then the subject has received increasing attention and recognition and there may be as many as 10 million environmental refugees in the World (World Resources Institute 1988). The definition suggested by El-Hinnawi was: "Environmental Refugees are those people who have been forced to leave their traditional habitat, temporarily or permanently, because of a marked environmental disruption (natural and/or triggered by people) that jeopardized their existence and/or seriously affected the quality of their life. By " environmental disruptions" in this definition is meant any physical, chemical and/or biological changes in the ecosystem (or the resource base) that render it, temporarily or permanently, unsuitable to support human life. According to this definition people displaced for political reasons or by civil strife, and migrants seeking better jobs purely on economic grounds, are not considered environmental refugees". The concept is not easy to define or quantify. Definitions and categories may be developed for the convenience of agencies and for many different purposes. One person's (or agency's) migrant may be another's refugee. The original Geneva definition of refugee is very restricting and would not encompass environmental refugees as defined above and especially not the "internally displaced". The term "refugee" is used somewhat flexibly in this paper and generally includes all those displaced internally or externally through environment related causes. The paper prefers to focus attention on the physical and social causes and impacts of the problem and on the humanitarian actions and research that are required. Environmental migrants are generally agreed to result from three main causes: Extreme events such as natural disasters and environmental or industrial accidents. Planned, or unplanned, relocation for "Development" purposes as in the case of reservoir construction or deforestation of indigenous peoples' lands. The results of malnutrition , hardship, ill health and wasting diseases, starvation and famine that may result from inadequate resources to maintain life, often associated with degraded land and reduced, inadequate or polluted water. Essam El-Hinnawi (1985) elaborated these as follows: "There are three broad categories of environmental refugees. First there are those who have been temporarily displaced because of an environmental stress. Once the environmental disruption is over and the environment rehabilitated they return to their original habitat. This is usually the situation with populations displaced by natural hazards such as earthquakes or cyclones or an environmental accident (for example an industrial accident that created temporary environmental disruption such as Bophal). "The second category of environmental refugees comprises those who have to be permanently displaced and re-settled in a new area. They are displaced because of permanent changes, generally man made, that affect their original habitat - in the case of the establishment of large reservoirs for example, or now, the longer term, essentially permanent, relocation effects of nuclear accidents such as at Chernobyl. "The third category of environmental refugees consists of individuals or groups of people who migrate from their original habitat, temporarily or permanently, in search of a better quality of life. Generally they only do this if the resource base in their original habitat has deteriorated to such an extent that it can no longer support them. Share croppers and small holders whose lands are being waterlogged and salinised and who cannot afford the capital investment necessary to reclaim them, often give up their holdings and migrate to nearby urban centres in search of other jobs. All of these causes result in migrations within the home country, but the third in particular is likely to give rise to migrations beyond the home country borders and thus create those who are officially defined as "refugees". In addition to these specific causes there are other factors that have an influence. The recent book on the World Environment 1972-1992 (UNEP 1992) pointed out once again that most of the demand for natural resources in the developing and less developed countries comes from the industrialised countries. It was estimated in 1992 by UNDP that some $500 billion a year is lost to the poor countries because of restrictions in and unequal access to international trade, financial and labour markets (this amounts to nearly ten times the aid provided to these countries). Migration in such areas as West Africa has long followed traditional routes and flowed back and forth as long as free trade was possible. However a recent article by Bimal Ghosh (1993) suggested that when "Trade Flows Freely, Migration Slows Down" referring to the more significant and involuntary migrations rather than the economically driven ones. He concluded: "Trade is not a complete answer to migration. But trade, aid and foreign direct investment can be woven into a new and dynamic fabric of economic cooperation between labour-surplus and capital-rich countries to make international migration more manageable and productive". "If nations are serious about reducing the threat of disruptive mass migration, generated or exacerbated by poverty and deprivation, they will need to develop and implement effective trade policies, evolved in a cooperative framework" The numbers involved Recent work by Westing (1992) and others suggests that "the numbers of people compelled to flee from their areas of habitual residence, both national internal and cross - border, already in the many millions, nonetheless keeps increasing by perhaps 3 millions per year. Many of the uprooted continue to flee owing to persecution, oppression, or war. However these triggering events appear not to have been worsening markedly in recent years. Other, more strictly environmental, refugees flee from such natural disasters as flooding, drought, and volcanic action, although these triggering events have also not been increasing in frequency or severity ." Westing goes on: "The net numbers of both "recognised" and "unrecognised" refugees have been increasing steadily in recent years. Indeed the world-wide net increase in " recognised" cross border refugees has been about 1 million per year; that of unrecognised cross-border refugees about half a million per year and that of unrecognised internal refugees about 1.5 million a year. What is being suggested here is that the ranks of all three of these categories are being swelled by environmental refugees rather than by political or social refugees". Aparticular case in point was highlighted in the Horn of Africa Bulletin, April 1991. published by the Life and Peace Institute. This stated that "In February 1991 the numbers of displaced people in Sudan's northern states stood at 1,800,000, according to the Commissioner for Displaced People. .. Efforts are now being made to solve the plight of the displaced by implementing programmes to find permanent locations for at least 800,000 among these, either in their original areas, or in alternative areas of agricultural production." "But there are not only the "real "refugees to consider. In each country there are the internally displaced people whose circumstances often are even more pitiful as they are not granted formal refugee status and consequently they are often not entitled to international help. In Sudan there are 3.5 million displaced persons and close to 2 million live in Khartoum. "In recent months some two hundred thousand have made their way back to the south. The conditions in the shanty towns around Khartoum are so difficult that an uncertain future in the south, from where they once fled, is to be preferred to the miserable life in the camps." According to the United States Commissioner for Refugees (USCR), at the end of 1992 there were just over 14 million refugees of all kinds in the Third World as well as over 20 million others unrecognised as refugees or displaced within their own countries. There are 109 identified "flows "of more than 10,000 and there are 300 separate major sites. AWorldwatch report estimated that about 10 million people could be considered environmental refugees in 1988 (Jacobson, Jodi, Environmental Refugees: A Yardstick of Habitability (Washington: Wordwatch, 1988). The report of the meeting held by The Refugee Policy Group, (RPG 1992), made some projections: "Extrapolating from the numbers of past environmental displacements and likely future disruptions indicates that by the turn of the century as many as one billion people may be displaced from their homes because their basic means of survival will have been destroyed" "The numbers are of course alarming. In fact, they are so large ....that it is difficult to use them in developing policies. ..It is primarily environmentalists who have examined the relationship between the environment and migration. The alarmingly high numbers of possible migrants have been used primarily to promote better environmental policies. Less attention has been given to the adequacy of migration policies .. for handling the movements that are already resulting from environmental degradation." Norman Myers has recently reviewed the possible impact of global warming and climate change with a view to projecting migration pressures. He has produced more modest projections for environmental refugees from all causes of around 150 million by 2050. This would represent an increase of environmental refugees to 1.5% of the then world's population compared with 0.2% at present. According to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP 1992), the richest 20% of the population of the world in 1960 had incomes thirty times greater than the poorest 20%. By 1990 the richest 20% had incomes that were 60% greater than the poorest 20 %. The gap between the rich and the poor within countries continues to expand in most countries of the world. One billion people are dependant on agriculture for a living in the productive drylands of the world and are at risk from drought and desertification. Another one billion people are living in urban shanty towns. 100 million people world wide have no form of shelter at all. In Calcutta, half a million sleep on the streets every night. In Bombay, 100,000. There are estimated to be two million homeless in the United States and 400,000 in the United Kingdom. The Minister of Environment in India recently stated that thirty thousand new environmental refugees arrive in Delhi every month. Urban areas in Africa are growing at rates in excess of 6% per annum. Securityissues Environment based conflicts are already happening and these are frequently based originally on conflicts over access to resources . The recent war in the Gulf was at least partly a reflection of this. Inequalities in access to natural resources or to an adequate environment, lead to social instabilities that tend to occur first in or around the least developed countries. Naigzy Gebremedhin, (1991) illustrated the connection between environment and security in describing the flow of refugees between and within the States of Ethiopia and Somalia. "Thousands of refugees have fled from the effects of environmental deterioration as well as the ravages of war. The two factors are difficult to separate. War has undoubtedly contributed to environmental degradation, but ecological crisis is itself a source of political conflict and instability in this region." As the Brundtland Report ("Our Common Future", 1987) found, "Poverty, injustice, environmental degradation and conflict interact in complex and potent ways. The immediate cause of any mass movement of refugees may appear to be political upheaval and military violence. But the underlying causes often include the deterioration of the natural resource base and its capacity to support the population". Areport commissioned by the Ethiopian Relief and Rehabilitation Commission on the drought and famine in the early 1970s found that: "The primary cause of the famine was not drought of unprecedented severity, but a combination of long-continued bad land use and steadily increased human and stock populations over decades". Once war breaks out the effects are exacerbated. In what is now Eritrea, the dusty highlands are deeply scarred by erosion - the Ethiopian army used to uproot trees to destroy the cover they provided for Eritrean soldiers" (The Economist. 1993). The effects of the massive aerial defoliation during the war in Vietnam are well known. The movement of refugees in turn adds to political tensions between the neighbouring countries and ecological degradation in the host countries. The influx of a large number of environmental refugees places additional pressure and demand on water resources and grazing land. The arid region in Ethiopia and Somalia which hosts thousands of refugees suffers from a dearth of water. (Gebremedhin 1991) Most Governments, including those of Ethiopia and Somalia, have adopted policies which regard refugee settlements as temporary phenomena. Such policies do not encourage the implementation of long-term development activities such as re-afforestation. As a result the deforestation around refugee settlements may be more pernicious and irreversible than deforestation elsewhere. 6 Environmental Impacts Up to now most attention has been given to the consequences and results of migration - to the problems that arise at the destination, and the problems of the camps. Some effort has also been made to draw attention to the positive aspects and impacts that refugees can have on the host communities. But much of the work so far has focused on the environmental problems facing the environmental refugees and those they create or contribute to at their destination. The environmental impacts of migration include the following: Over-exploitation of natural vegetation which may lead to increased soil erosion and gully formation, increased water run-off and siltation of rivers and reservoirs downstream; pollution of water and soils; depletion of water resources; changes in land use from sustainable to unsustainable; reduction or loss of "reserve lands" for local population in drought periods; spreading of and decreased resistance to various kinds of diseases between hosts and refugees. As the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) says (Rapport , 1991) in many cases refugees live in camps with a population of several hundred thousand people. The root causes of environmental degradation in these refugee situations are similar to those existing in normal communities of a similar size. The effects are more pronounced however due to a number of specific conditions which include: disproportionately high population densities; the fact that refugee camps are often located in environmentally fragile areas; the frequently inadequate infrastructure; the fact that the incentives for refugees to maintain their environment may be low due to the trauma of resettlement, war, and because the land where they are living is not theirs. The UNHCR found that, based on 1989 estimates, roughly 11 million trees were cut for shelter needs during the initial period of influxes in Africa alone. This represents the deforestation of over 12,000 hectares. In addition, about 4 million tons of wooded fuel were consumed by refugees in Africa. World wide, 13 million tons of fuel-wood were consumed by refugees in 1989. As Richard Black (1993) points out there are a number of factors affecting the extent of the environmental impact that may occur. The size of the refugee and other displaced populations is a key factor determining the extent of the area's resources that must be drawn on to sustain them. The length of time over which the refugees have been displaced, the condition they are in, the opportunities for them to be gainfully employed and establish roots, and the length of time they must remain in the camps are all key factors. Of critical importance also are the conditions under which they are settled. So often camps and settlements are established late, in a hurry, with inadequate planning and support and infrastructure. In such a situation protection of the environment is not a prime consideration. Indeed Dr Black found that only about half of the NGOs that he polled have yet really developed firm guidelines for environmental protection. The impacts on the host environment may be extended to those on the host peoples. Frequently they are at first welcoming but then have to cope with sharing their resources and perhaps their reserves with the new arrivals. This may totally undermine the sustainability of their own livelihood patterns developed over the years and which may well be sufficient to protect them against cyclical or unexpected environmental disasters. They may also find that much attention is being given to the refugees but none to their predicament. What appeared to be unused land to those seeking a site for a camp, may have been the local communities' insurance against disaster. Worse, the competition may reach the point where they themselves find they can no longer sustain themselves and they may themselves be forced to migrate, as a consequence of the impact (perhaps past but lasting) of the refugee camp placed in their midst. Susan and William Tamondong-Helin, give a graphic account of these impacts in their paper "Migration and the Environment: Interrelationships in Sub-Saharan Africa " including the migrations from Mozambique to Malawi. They describe the impact of refugees on those that welcome them; the allocation of traditional reserve lands to refugee camps; the competition with refugees for wood and water and the long term continuing impacts. The refugees may receive support but the locals do not, although the locals may benefit somewhat from the improved infrastructure built primarily for the refugees. The authors recommend very forcefully that "Donors and supporting organisations should look specifically at the Malawian (host) villagers, who are seriously affected by, but taken for granted in the midst of the refugee movement" As Black points out: "problems may also arise because of the refugees' unfamiliarity with local environmental circumstances; lack of knowledge of local systems of sustainable management; ignoring of local regulations due to poverty or political insecurity; and an inherent short -term outlook deriving from their temporary status." There are also possibilities of developing secondary impacts through inadequate treatment of the first. As Black says, Environmental Assessments should focus on how environmental impacts can be minimised. Environmental assessment should not become a mechanism through which refugees are denied protection. Where there are environmental impacts care should be taken to avoid rushing to resolve them too simplistically. Reforestation efforts without the full involvement of local people and the use of locally adapted plant species are very likely to fail. The impact of the refugees on a host community makes it even more critical than normal that the community should be fully involved in the design and preparation of any local development programme. This takes time, which is often not available, and necessitates advance planning, but research could show the way to improved anticipation of migrant flows and improved planning for their handling. So far there has been insufficient recognition of the fact that environmental migration may become an increasingly self-perpetuating problem; migration from one stressed environment creating dramatically increased pressure on another one and so on and on. This is not a sustainable pattern. Attention has to be given to the causes and more effort spent on preventing the problem than on trying to relieve the otherwise unbelievable symptoms. The Research Needs The above brief review of the environmental causes and impacts of migrations indicates the scope of the growing concern on this topic, but it also illustrates the scarcity of solid information based on rigorous scientific data or research. Keeping track of migrants and refugees and enumerating them has never been an easy task (Harrell-Bond et al 1993). Identifying those that might be classified as environmental migrants as opposed to those provoked by other causes is even harder. The round figure of 10 million environmental refugees referred to above is frequently quoted, but the basis of the calculation is not very rigorous. What ever the real figure, Westing (1992) has shown that the numbers do appear to be increasing significantly along trends that can reasonably be expected to continue. How important is it to quantify precisely the numbers of Environmental Migrants and Refugees and how important is it to know how many out of the total number of refugees have been displaced by environmental causes? One answer is that if it can be shown that a certain significant proportion of all refugees in Africa are the result of land degradation in their home territories, then that information should presumably strengthen the case for reducing land degradation in those territories . After all the knowledge that some 2500 people were killed at Bophal, that several thousand families were moved from the toxic waste dumps at Love Canal and that 13 5,000 people were moved from a 750 sq km area at Chemobyl may have helped support arguments for addressing the root causes; but Bophal and Love Canal are once again occupied. Where, as in India, some 20 million people are said to have been displaced by official projects, with irrigation projects alone displacing some 6.5 million (RPG 1992), this knowledge should help provoke and inform revisions in the approach of governments and developers. With ngard to the longer-term, less dramatic, but even more difficult causes such as land degradation and the effects of drought, the Tamondong-Helins say "The causes of land degradation within the semi-arid zones are multiple and often inseparable. Environment problems do not occur in isolation and are often intimately linked with security problems and social stability. The causes of migration in this environment are influenced by many socio-political, economic and other environmental factors". Defining, identifying, categorizing and separately distinguishing environmental migrants and refugees would clearly improve the information base available and throw more light on their needs and problems. But would it do anything practical for the refugees themselves? It could even be counter-productive, in that some environmental refugees may be considered more responsible for their own plight than others (those resulting from land degradation more than those from floods more than those from industrial accidents for instance). This could (it already does) lead to inequalities of treatment. Definitions and categorization have been a tool for avoiding action as well as encouraging it. Considerations of national sovereignty, mandates of organisations and legal definitions have already affected and could rapidly increase the complexity of addressing the fundamental humanitarian issue. The Root Causes At the first of these conferences in 1990, Vaughan Robinson pointed out that it is essential to "study the factors which encourage flight , and how and why different individuals respond to them in different ways. There is a strong case that most of the research should be concentrated on the root causes of the problem, rather than on quantifying the symptoms (the migrants). The complexities of the causes outlined above show where the focus of research should be. Much has already been done in this area but there is a need for a much more humanistic and less agro-economic, cash-crop , production oriented approach. On the basis of this fresh approach, economic arguments could then be developed to show that money would be better spent on resolving the problem before rather than after the event. But this is a necessary part of the much broader research agenda designed to improve the sustainable management of the productive dry lands. The Special Needs of the Migrants With respect to the migrants themselves, it seems appropriate to determine better their special needs and leam how better to meet these needs within the constraints of the host environments. The humanitarian approach to dealing with the problem seems more appropriate than trying to narrow and categorize it. An essential element to recognise is the extent of local variations and the need for all research and proposed solutions to be based firmly on what the refugees and the host populations themselves perceive to be the problem. To the maximum extent possible the research agenda should be set by those involved and those faced with the real life difficulties in the field. Practical Approaches for Action The need for practical approaches, for concrete solutions to the hard-to-express or define needs of the people involved cannot be over-emphasised. This practical approach is emphasised by those in the field such as the Tamondong-Helins (1992): "There is no easy way to fix the problems of environmental degradation in the semi-arid regions of Africa , but there are processes that contribute to desertification which are poorly understood. Towait until its complexity is fully grasped may be logical but it is not practical. There is a need for immediate action....There are no panaceas but constant, steady progress is imperative." Influencing Decision Makers An area where research , and action is needed, is on ways to increase the public awareness and pressure on politicians, and on industrial and commercial leaders, to address the causes of problems rather than only the results. The dry lands are rapidly approaching their limits of growth. The idea that continued economic growth, population growth, and increasing socio-economic development are all together possible for ever is already becoming recognised by many as hallucinatory dreaming. Planning The fact is that we have to find a sustainable means of living in a sustainable environment. That means planning for the cyclical crises, managing the risks and results of natural and man made disasters, allowing for migration and coping with it but striving to reduce the need for it. Apart from nomads, of whom there are few left, and semi-nomadic pastoralists, most people prefer to remain stable. Forced migration is nobody's wish. The Search for Security As Arthur Westing (1992) says, it has become clear "that a long-term solution to the problem of environmental refugees can only be reached through the achievement of overall environmental security. And environmental security, in mm, appears to be attainable only within a framework of comprehensive human security, which inter alia takes into account notions of carrying capacity for humans and of sustainable development. .. It is clear that in the long term the poignant dilemma of the ever-increasing numbers of refugees can be addressed only in terms of achieving environmental security within a framework of comprehensive human security." Minimise the Environmental Impacts With regard to the environmental impacts of refugees, there are again questions to be answered: How important is it to do "research" on the environmental impacts of refugee settlements? The immediate problem is apparent - the poor or even critical state of the newly arrived migrants and of the environment in and around their camps or new settlement areas. Don't we know already the steps that need to be taken? Shouldn't more effort therefore go into practical measures that can alleviate or prevent these problems? Shouldn't the money be better spent on practical on-site actions? These would be developed and evaluated constantly in the light of experience. This would be applied research, based on the needs in the field, and applying solutions for those needs on a real time basis; they could be regarded as on-going pilot programmes designed to improve the understanding of the causes and relieve the impacts of the results of environmental migration. Clarify Environmental Impacts Black has pointed out that there is need for a clearer understanding of what is meant by environmental impact and environmental degradation. Environmental impacts such as vegetation changes can be temporary, long term or irreversible. There is a distinction to be made between these and actual land or soil degradation of a permanent nature. Forms of environmental change other than soil degradation and deforestation may also be important - health and disease related impacts (for crops, cattle and humans), for instance. 11 Opportunities for Post Impact Studies There is also an opportunity to study the longer term impact of refugees on the environment and especially to determine the extent of any environmental recovery after the refugees return home. This could be very valuable for the assessment of the wider issues of dryland development sustainability. It is also important to distinguish the environmental impacts of refugees from those occurring already, or that would have occurred anyway. The Search for "New Paradigms" of Development. Priorities for research and policy in refugee affected areas coincide with other development concerns such as local resource management strategies and the way that these withstand or adapt to pressure brought by increasing populations in refugee affected areas (Black). There is a close relationship here to the search for new paradigms of rural development in the drylands. There is a realisation that the top-down approach doesn't work, that "trickle-down" benefits are hard to achieve and that radically new approaches have to be taken to achieving sustainable dry land management. Everyone now seems to agree that these must include the full and willing participation of the people on the land. Ways are being considered how this can better be encouraged and supported by international and national agencies. These agencies themselves are exploring new ways of improved and closer coordination of their activities. The Commission on Sustainable Development has to oversee the follow-up to the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development held last year in Rio de Janeiro. Most of the key UN organisations, especially UNDP, UNEP and UNCHS (Habitat) are going through extensive reviews of their programmes. The last two are working closely on the Relief to Development Continuum, bringing together their respective expertise and experience in the complementary fields of environment and human settlements. Akey factor in the implementation of the Convention on Desertification, which is being negotiated now, will be how a significant change of approach can be brought about. The ability to link commitments of an international treaty to effective action at the village level will be key to its success. In the long term, the key to successful handling of refugees will also depend on improved involvement of the affected people in the planning and support of migrant movements. CONCLUSIONS. The conclusions of both of the above discussions on the causes of environmental migration and on the environmental effects of migrations are that they need to be considered and addressed within the broader context of the development and management of sustainable environments. Access to resources and resource use are keys to the consideration of both cause and consequence. Ensuring sustainable management is essential 12 in the long run. To achieve this, planning and socially rational management are required. Many likely causes of environmentally induced migrations can be predicted. Active volcanoes on the Pacific Rim; flooding in Bangladesh; prolonged drought, locusts, land degradation in the dry lands; accidents at nuclear installations and industrial plants, tornadoes and hurricanes in the United States; increasing landless from subdivision of smallholdings at death; salination of irrigated lands; all these can be more or less predicted. Effective planning would enable prompt and effective action to be taken so as to minimise the social and environmental disruption caused by ensuing migrations. Suitable locations could be identified in advance during national planning exercises as potential sites for temporary settlements. Preparation for the more predictable events such as floods in Bangladesh could stretch to increased provision of flood-proof shelters and temporary accommodations. Models could be prepared which would help identify suitable sites and produce plans to deal with unexpected emergencies. These could help achieve a fast start to the establishment of necessary support and infrastructure. The role of industry i' of particular importance, in so far as many of the industryrelated accidents or impacts are predictable (although usually regarded optimistically as unlikely). The responsibility of industry for environmental impacts resulting from their activities, and thus for the social consequences is clear to the public, whatever legal protections may have been established. It is in industry's interest, as much as the public's, to ensure that adverse environmental consequences are minimised and to gain from the positive image of being able to show that they are accepting their responsibilities by taking all reasonable precautions but also planning for the accidents that always might happen. The conclusions of the meeting held in 1992 by the Refugee Policy Group (RPG 1992) draw many of these threads together. The meeting emphasised that ways must be found to enable policy makers and planners to design and implement programs that promote more rational use of the environment. At the same time we must recognize that large numbers of people will be forced from their homes in the coming years because they will not be able to sustain themselves. The goal should be to minimize mass environmental movements while handling those that occur with rational, humane policies. The agenda for the future should include: address the causes of environmental migration and develop strategies to deal with the complex and interlocking issues that prompt these movements. anticipate possible environmental disruptions and consequent migration scenarios and plan appropriate responses in advance encourage greater transnational cooperation between countries and among international organisations develop more cooperative working relationships among the various involved groups develop a better understanding of the development/ environment/migration chain 13 UNDP (1992) "Human Development Report 1992 ".Oxford University Press. UNFPA 1992 "The State of World Population 1992" United Nations Population Fund. UNFPA 1993 "The State of World Population 1993 "United Nations Population Fund. UNHCR 1991 "Some Environmental Considerations in Refugee Camps and Settlements". Rapport No 10 Autumn 1991. Westing, Arthur, 1992, "Environmental Refugees: A Growing Category of Displaced Persons". Environmental Conservation , Vol 19, No. 3. World Commission on Environment and Development, 1987. "Our Common Future" Oxford University Press. ENVIRONMENT AND FORCED MIGRATION AREVIEW ' / ^ By Franklin Cardy, UNEP. Nairobi />A«s: \ w ' ' ^ The key question then is to how to provide these conditions so that the populations of the world that are at a high risk to environmental factors should have a secure enabling environment in which to protect themselves and their families. There is a new book out (Tiffen et al 1993) called "More People, Less Erosion", which examines the inter-actions between people and their environment over a period of sixty years in Machakos, Kenya. Between 1930 and 1990 the population of the District increased more than fivefold. Nevertheless the environment in 1990 was considered to be in much better condition than in 1930. Soil erosion had been slowed or reversed; predictions of wood fuel crisis had not been fulfilled; agriculture production per head and per hectare was higher and new technologies had been adopted as appropriate. The knowledge that success stories such as this do exist, and the conviction that they can be achieved elsewhere, is fundamental in the drive to turn around the atmosphere of failure and despair that so easily pervades discussion of dryland environmental development and the causes of much environmental migration. If Research can spread the word about these possibilities, demonstrate the possibilities and convince the government leaders, public opinion leaders and the young, that success is possible when the root causes are addressed, then research will have played a major and outstanding role in the task of addressing the causes and results of environmental migrations. REFERENCES El-Hinnawi, Essam; "Environmental Refugees" UNEP 1985. 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