Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
research,
ows into Europe itself resulting
directly from climate stress in developing states. Rather it places most stress on
movements within developing countries themselves and the problem of internally
displaced people. The focus is on development-related resilience-building. It states
that the core policy aim should be to improve development opportunities to allow
people to stay put in local communities as resources became scarcer. At the same
time, the Commission acknowledges that more needs to be done positively to assist
relocation where this would help access to resources. It admits that so far no
more than a few limited projects have been funded to give substance to this more
positive approach and that recipients
it downplays the likelihood of mass
'
country strategy papers
still
include no
mention of the climate
migration link that would serve as a basis for practical aid
programming decisions.
46
Two authoritative migration experts welcomed the new development-oriented
focus and the commitment to move beyond ad hoc and defensive reactions to
individual disasters, but observed that most policy ideas contained in the new
documents are still aimed at reducing migration rather than promoting relocation
as a positive form of adaptation.
47
Another expert opines that EU member states
have so far been reluctant to radically deepen EU-level cooperation in response to
the prospect of climate-induced migration, indeed arguably the latter has made
them more nervous to surrender sovereignty in this area.
48
Most diplomats do now
argue that the focus needs to be on intra-regional
-
ows into Europe.
They tend to argue that climate migration may be of more indirect than direct
concern to Europe: displacements from one developing state to another, or from
one region to another within the same state, may trigger con
ows not
ict and instability
that then a
ect Western interests. Several new cooperation programmes in con-
sequence focus on this dimension of climate migration
although funds remain
limited compared with those pumped into standard border controls.
A running debate exists over the formal status of
-
'
environmental refugees
'
. The
di
culty has been in legally de
ning an
'
environmental refugee
'
, as climate-
induced displacements are not likely to be driven by identi
able perpetrators to the
same extent as with political refugees. Legal experts insist it would be di
cult to
'
'
'
'
draw the line between a
who takes a pre-
emptive decision to move in order to avoid a gradually deteriorating environment
at a moment when a genuine choice still exists in that decision. Moreover, as
commented in chapter two, it may be impossible to separate out climate from
general socio-economic factors in determining the reasons for migration. It may in
most cases be di
climate refugee
and a
climate migrant
cally climate migration from other
forms of migration. The UN convention on refugees was crafted in 1951 to deal
with those
cult to distinguish a speci
eeing from totalitarian regimes; it is looking out of touch with the
very di
erent factors driving refugee
ows today.
