Environmental “Refugees”

     
     “Misfortune” turned me into a refugee. However, as per the saying, “a blessing in disguise,” it accorded me an opportunity to work with professors at the University of Oxford who document, not only the resilience of refugees but also the success stories refugees record against all odds. That ultimately led me to where I am today, The Hunt Institute for Engineering and Humanity at Southern Methodist University, where once again I am being inspired by the possibilities of “misfortune” turned into a “fortune.”

     Here I am fortunate enough to be involved in an upcoming conference entitled “Climate Extremes: A Forum on Adaptation & Building Resilience in Texas,” which is sponsored by the Hunt Institute. This conference led me to think of fellow refugees who fall outside of the narrow confines of current international laws-- ranging from the 1951 UN (United Nations) Convention for refugees to the AU (African Union) Convention governing specific aspects of refugee issues in Africa.
     
     I fled from my country, Ethiopia, in 2007 and was granted refugee status by Uganda, my first country of asylum. Yet, I hadn’t thought much about the other types of displaced people whose displacement is caused by various reasons outside of those enumerated in the refugee conventions. In fact, I entertained an illusion whereby I considered myself to be a “bona fide refugee” and I tended to look down on others as almost “bogus refugees.” Even listening, half-heartedly, to a BBC program in the late 2000s about “Environmental Refugees”-- whereby the influx of Eritrean migrants was cited as an example-- did not help to modify my view. What did bring my attention to the topic, however, was Alexander Betts book entitled, “SURVIVAL MIGRATION: FAILED GOVERNANCE AND THE CRISIS OF DISPLACEMENT.”

     Alex is a Professor in Refugee and Forced Migration Studies at the University of Oxford. His book gave me a new perspective. He pinpointed the international refugee framework that “generally defines a refugee as someone fleeing targeted persecution” whereas it ignores the multitude of people displaced by other “serious human rights deprivations.”

     He illustrated how “through malevolence, incompetence, or lack of capacity, many governments cease to ensure fundamental conditions for human dignity” resulting in the displacement of their citizens. This broadened my thinking and made me reflect more sympathetically towards migrants in general. For the moment, though, my reflection dwells mainly on those whose displacement is caused by environmental disaster. Thus, it collates the capacity or the will of various governments, or lack thereof, to protect victims displaced by environmental disaster. It also reflects on the international community’s response to grapple with this category of displaced populations.

     My earliest memory of people displaced due to environmental disaster transports me back to 1973 to my own country where thousands of Ethiopians perished with famine, particularly in a province called Wollo. The then government of Emperor Haileselassie tried to shield itself from embarrassment by covering up the famine. University students and professors photographed the tragedy and tipped the outside world before a British journalist named Jonathan Dimbleby arrived to film the famine and take ultimate credit for exposing the hidden famine. Meanwhile, some peasant families who foresaw that there wouldn’t be any rain for some time to come made a smart move and started fleeing to Addis Abeba. Addis is the Capital of Ethiopia as well as the seat of the then Organization of African Unity (OAU) now African Union (AU).

     When the government was no longer able to cover-up this tragedy, one official reportedly commented on the displaced peasants who had fled to the city by claiming:
“It is the habit of Wollo to migrate.” Therefore, disregarding the hardship they were under.


     That arrogance and failure of the government coupled with other grievances that had accumulated for decades rendered the Haileselassie government to be the last monarchy in Ethiopian history. Ironically, the military regime that stepped in to fill the vacuum created by the 1974 revolution was not much of an improvement. In fact, conditions worsened and brought about the 1984 famine where nearly one million Ethiopians perished. For the first time in Ethiopian history, people began to cross international borders to escape from drought and famine, among other reasons. Peasants who were traditionally loathe to leave their ancestral village are now well-known as international migrants to the extent that they are preyed upon by human traffickers.

     Of course, according to the thesis, developed nations are also to blame for the gargantuan CO2 emissions that cause adverse climate change globally which then affects developing nations most severely. However, as a denizen of the third world, this writer is of the opinion that environmental disaster per se will not create international environmental migrants unless compounded by other governance failures. Ever since Ethiopia made “progress” by jumping from the frying pan into the fire during the 1974 socialist revolution, then again in 1991 with the advent of ethnic liberation movements, its internally displaced environmental migrants gained “international stature” by crossing international borders.

     This brings me to a conversation I had with some African-Americans I met in March 2014, a few days later after I was resettled to Dallas from Uganda. All of them told me that they moved down to Texas from Louisiana due to Hurricane Katrina. A thought struck me then, as it still does, for if these people had been citizens of the third world, their plight might not have been confined within the borders of their country. It could have forced them to be displaced to a faraway place where they would have had to grapple with a new language and custom. Simply put, in a nation where governance has totally failed, victims of environmental disaster may not have any fallback within their country, thus forcing them to cross borders.

     At a time where the world is rocked by refugee crisis; and where the conscience of Europe is particularly pricked by the influx of refugees from the Middle East produced by civil and proxy war, it’s useful to note that even in the aftermath of the war, long after the guns are silenced—(if they ever would)--that there would still be a new brand of refugees whose nations’ natural ecosystem have been rendered almost uninhabitable. Sadly, as Alex wrote, the international community is still at a loss to “conceptualize such a population.”

     One can hardly find mechanisms in the international refugee regime that deal with victims of environmental disaster except the proposal by the International Organization for Migration (IOM) to define such an emerging tragic displaced population.

• Hunter and Stephanie Hunt Institute for Engineering and Humanity