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The UNHCR and Disaster Displacement in the 21st Century pp 33–59Cite as

Environmental Changes and the Competing Perspectives on Environmentally Displaced Persons

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Abstract

This chapter introduces the case and thus presents a concise background of the academic approaches to the topics of environmental changes and disaster displacement. Under environmental changes, this thesis sums up both climate change-related changes, natural disasters that are non-related to climate change and environmental destruction that is non-related to climate change. In this context, the chapter outlines some of the leading security theories that serve as a background for many of the scholarly approaches to the topic. In doing so, it shows the development from a strictly environmental conflict debate up to the early 2000s toward the current—more nuanced—debate on climate change, natural disasters and the accompanying human implications. In this way, the chapter outlines the security connotations with regard to environmental migration and displacement, and it presents a background on environmentally displaced persons. Overall, this chapter lays the groundwork for the analysis.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    For an overview of the critique on the speech act in the securitization approach, see Rothe (2016).

  2. 2.

    For an overview of climate impacts, see Reusswig and Lass (2013).

  3. 3.

    For a categorization of environmental shocks, see Lenton (2013, p. 61), who differentiated between extreme events such as large earthquakes and tsunamis, abrupt swings, e.g. an El Niño event, and a tipping point where a system abruptly leaves its current state.

  4. 4.

    Contrary to these rapid-onset environmental changes, research has also been conducted on slow-onset changes such as e.g. droughts, failing harvests, and rising sea-levels (Collins 2013, p. 114).

  5. 5.

    For a differentiation between risk and vulnerability, see Alexander (1997, p. 291). Alexander understands risk as the product of hazard and vulnerability.

  6. 6.

    For more details on the prediction of natural hazards from satellite imagery, see Gillespie et al. (2007).

  7. 7.

    Cf. Baldwin and Bettini (2017); Boas and Rothe (2016); Corry (2012); Kita and Raleigh (2018); von Lucke et al. (2014); Meierding (2013); Methmann et al. (2013); Oels and von Lucke (2015); Rothe (2012, 2016); Scheffran et al. (2012a); Trombetta (2014).

  8. 8.

    For more information on ecosystem services, see Black et al. (2013a, p. 2).

  9. 9.

    Examples for slow-onset environmental crises are deforestation, drought, disease outbreak and cumulative pollution (Black et al. 2013b, p. 33, Collins 2013, p. 114).

  10. 10.

    As examples, the floods of May 2010 in China and of July and August 2010 in Pakistan can be mentioned. These contributed to over 10 million people becoming displaced (Black et al. 2013b, p. 34).

  11. 11.

    For more information on ‘disaster diplomacy’, see Enia (2008). The author analyzed the transformative effect of the Tsunami of 2004 on internal conflicts in Indonesia and Sri Lanka with a special focus on post-disaster reconstruction by the government and/or opposition groups (Enia 2008, p. 16).

  12. 12.

    Research on Hurricane Katrina has focused on social vulnerability, class and race, as well as on the questions of who received aid from government agencies and who was able to return after displacement (IPCC 2012, p. 80).

  13. 13.

    The characteristics of vulnerability research, e.g. sensitivity, exposure and adaptive capacity, have emerged from the literature on risk-hazards and the food-security; meanwhile they have been included in the research on environmental changes (Luers 2005, p. 215). For a classification of the types of vulnerability, see Alexander (1997, p. 292), who differentiated between total vulnerability, economic vulnerability, technological vulnerability, newly generated vulnerability and residual unameliorated vulnerability.

  14. 14.

    For a more detailed depiction of the displacement post-2004 tsunami, see Gray et al. (2014).

  15. 15.

    Lischer differentiated between the following types of violence in refugee camps: attacks between the sending state and the refugees, attacks between the receiving state and the refugees, ethnic or factional violence among the refugees, internal violence within the receiving state and inter-state war or unilateral intervention (Lischer 2006, pp. 11–12).

  16. 16.

    For information on more factors, see Reuveny (2007, p. 659).

  17. 17.

    Extensive research on violence in Kenyan refugee camps shows different forms of insecurity in refugee camps: domestic and community violence, sexual abuse and violence, armed robbery, violence within national refugee groups, violence between national refugee groups and violence between refugees and the local population (Crisp 2000, p. 604).

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  1. Department of History and Social Sciences, Institute of Political Science, TU Darmstadt, Darmstadt, Germany

    Sinja Hantscher

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Hantscher, S. (2019). Environmental Changes and the Competing Perspectives on Environmentally Displaced Persons. In: The UNHCR and Disaster Displacement in the 21st Century. Contributions to Political Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19689-9_2

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