Being removed from our native place, because of an ecological disaster and forced to go live elsewhere in order to survive and make a living is a terrible ordeal. This is the ordeal of environmental refugees, also called the environmentally displaced.The UNEP, the environmental program of the United Nations defines environmental refugees: “as 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 disruption’ 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.” The movement of populations, for ecological reasons, is an important but often forgotten by the media.

Unlike political refugees, "environmental refugees" are not yet recognized in world conventions. One organization, LiSER, was founded in 2002 and focuses on environmentally displaced by analyzing their problems and needs. Their contact information is:

LiSER Foundation
Zandlaan 34
2121 VS Bennebroek
The Netherlands
Tel: ++31 23 5332892
E-mail: info@liser.org
Web: www.liser.org


Countries at Risk
The Maldives:
Mohamed Nasheed, President of the Maldives, said the chain of 1,200 island and coral atolls dotted 500 miles from the tip of India is likely to disappear under the waves if the current pace of climate change continues to raise sea levels.Guardian: [1] (Nov. 10, 2008)

Migration is not new, it has been going on for thousands of years. Environmental displacement is new because there are more and more people that are forced to abandon their homes due to environmental degradation. The causes may be natural: like hurricanes, tsunamis, earthquakes. Or caused by human activity: like deforestation, soil erosion, over population and the poor infrastructures developed to accomodate population growth, and more directly by climate change resulting from human activity, pollution in particular. According to a UN University study, by 2010, there will be approximately 50 million environmental refugees world-wide. But this is only an estimate, no one knows for sure.

Causes of Environmental Refugees

Desertification
Desertification, exacerbated by climate change, represents "the greatest environmental challenge of our times" and governments must overhaul policy approaches to the issue or face mass migrations of people driven from degraded homelands within a single generation, warns a new analysis from the United Nations University. [1] (June 28, 2007)

Latest Natural Disasters

Disasters