Desertification and Sea-Level Rise: New Trends Causing Environmental Refugees in the Twenty First Century

Desertification and Sea-Level Rise:New Trends Causing Environmental Refugees in the Twenty First Century

Kiyana AllenKayly Ober American University April 2008

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Table of ContentsIntroduction

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….3

Separating the terms “economic migrant” and “environmental refugee”

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Desertification and its Effects on Forced Migration: The Sahel as a Case Study……6

A Brief History of Desertification……………………………………………………………………………..6Desertification in the SahelSahelian Migration……………………………………………………………………………………..10The Fulani of Northern Burkina Faso…………………………………………………………...10The Maradi Region of Niger

Sea-level Rise and its Effects on Forced Migration: China, Bangladesh, and SmallIsland Nations as Case Study…………………………………………………………………………13

Low-Lying Coastal Cities……………………………………………………………………………………….14Countries with Majority of Land in Low-Lying Deltas……………………………………………….16Small Islands and Atolls…………………………………………………………………………………………18

Conclusions…………………………………………………………………………………………………21

“Environmental Refugee” as United Nations Policy……………………………………………………………..21

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Introduction

Norman Myers defines environmental refugees as “people who can no longer gain asecure livelihood in their erstwhile homelands because of drought, soil erosion, desertification,and other environmental problems” (752). There is some debate over the difference betweeneconomic and environmental refugees, but Norman argues that the two are intertwined becausethe environmental problem leads to the economic hardship that causes involuntary displacement. Diane Bates argues that “environmental refugee” is too broad a term, andsuggests three classifications: those displaced by disasters (either natural, such as a hurricane,or anthropogenic, such as an oil spill), those displaced by the expropriation of their environment(either through economic development, such as China’s Three Gorges Dam, or through warfarethat ravages the land), and those who are displaced due to the gradual, anthropogenicdegradation of the environment. This paper will focus on those migrants who fall into the thirdcategory, or more specifically, those who have been displaced by unpreventable environmentalproblems spurred by climate change; namely, desertification and sea-level rise. This paper setsout to examine if forced migration due to climate change does, in fact, exist. And if it does, whatare its impacts and implications? We will look at recent examples and scientific forecasts torender a prediction. We predict that environmental forced migration does exist, and the poorestand least-developed nations take the brunt of ecological disasters.The first half of our research will explore the relationship between desertification andmigration by approaching the Sahel region of Africa as a case study. It will examine how residents of this region are coping with desertification, where they are migrating to, and theeffects of their migratory patterns on the rest of the region. We hypothesize that the data willshow an exodus of desertification refugees from rural dryland regions of the Sahel into primarily heavily-populated urban areas of West African states.The second half of our paper seeks to examine effect sea-level rise has on migration. Weunderstand that sea-level rise is a newly-investigated phenomena and inherently future-based.However, comparing future predictions to occurrences in the last three decades allows us to seethe timeline at which sea-level rise affects, and will affect, various nations. We will use China,

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