Climate Change-Induced Migration and Violent Conflict – Summary

Chani Kinsler
09/18/2023
Environmental Security: INR 6553
Professor Konstantin Ash

In “Climate change-induced migration and violent conflict” by Rafael Reuveny argues that we can predict the effects of climate change on population migration by looking closely at the effects of environmental problems on migration. The author shared insight by exploring past effects on migration induced by environmental problems, like violent conflict also how climate change is expected to cause, and effect migration had on conflict. The author referred to this as ‘‘environmental migration”.
The author argues that people can adapt to environmental problems in three ways they can stay in one place and do nothing, accept the costs; stay in place and mitigate changes; or leave the affected area(s). In developed countries they mitigate problems through technology innovation and transformational institutions. In less developed countries they are least likely to mitigate their issues and more likely leave affected areas, which, causes conflict in receiving areas due to several reasons. Like over population due to depleting of resources.
One of the main premises the author argues that some will say that if a group(s) decide to migrate they will if it’s “a ‘net benefit’ or the total benefit minus total cost”. Despite there are many countries, they choose the one that provides the largest net benefit, most likely a country that isn’t experiencing environmental issues. The author states that there is a problem with this type of response one is some assume that people choose whether to migrate, but basically the people are forced to migrate, some can choose not to leave, maybe because they can’t afford it or because they hope to survive the event(s). Another problem is the ability to distinguish between intrastate and interstate movements despite the different constraints.
The author further argues that environmental problems play a role in migration, for example extreme weather events, which the author says usually is “idiosyncratic and localized.” Other weather events include rising sea levels, land degradation, and declining freshwater resources. Underdeveloped populations struggle to deal with these kinds of environmental problems, and more likely than developed countries to leave the affected area, especially when trust in their government to protect them is low.
Some examples the author provides is one that he considers to be a less developed country that was experiencing land degradation and scarcity have been “Bangladesh (East Pakistan before 1971) since the 1950s”. Many in the population were poor and depended on farming, and when the country started experiencing environmental issues (Frequent storms, floods, and droughts) it made making a living a strain. The region also experiencing a population boost from migration going from 12 to 17 million moving to India, and half a million moved within Pakistan. Another example was in the United States in the 1930s, farming in the Great Plains caused 2.5 million people to migrate because of environmental issues affecting their lively hood (strong winds, a prolonged drought, and aggressive soil tilling produced many large dust storms).
The author further argues that migration can conflict especially in the area receiving the people. This can cause competition, because now this area requires more resources, including existing socioeconomic “fault lines” like migrants taking job and land from the host county, ethnic tension, distrust, and Auxiliary conditions (basically help from migrants some times to groups that cause political instability in that host country). A few examples the author provided was violence in the 1980s after Bangladeshi environmental migrants came to India. The migration in the 1930’s in US Great Plains in some areas the migrants experienced slurs, beatings, and discrimination, their shacks were burned, and police were sent to block their entry to some areas they tried to move to. In 1969 a war broke out in Honduras after the arrival of environmental migrants from El Salvador.
The author’s theory is that patterns and importance must be the focus, that the environmental problems caused via climate change (in the form of natural disasters), arable land (for food growth), lack of freshwater to drink, and deforestation that plays a role in flooding and land degradation, that negatively impact the population because of their dependance on farming for a living.
To promote his theory the author presented 38 cases of environmental migration that showed a pattern how migrants crossing international borders, plays a role in conflict. It doesn’t always lead to conflict, there is violence including interstate and intrastate wars. In most of the cases the receiving areas were underdeveloped and dependent on the environment for their economies. Ethno-religious tension and competition over resources and resource scarcity played a role as well. The author concluded that environmental problems alone do not explain the outcomes in the cases he presented, but they do appear to play roles in these events that took place.
The author informed the reader that scholars agree that when no mitigation efforts are taken the effects of climate change are high but also implementing mitigation efforts are also costly so instead of addressing it many would wait an see how things go. The author implies that public policy can mitigate migration due to environmental issues, despite how slow changing energy systems are and the time for new innovation to occur. But if the response to the pressure is to continue fossil fuel consumption, things will work out somehow, as climate change continues some thinking its slow, we have time to address it. In the mean time migrations are happening now, conflict is happening now, fueling recruitment to terrorist organizations. The author proposes a possible solution, to tackling this issue early, before it grows, focusing on the most vulnerable population which would be the low developed countries. By helping them be less reliant on farming alone and protecting areas from flooding, the author understands that this will be costly. The author suggests the ‘‘polluter pays’’ principle which developed countries should finance most of the effort required to defend the low developed countries against the effects of climate change, since they are main contributors of pollution. The author understands that this suggestion will most likely be rejected but these countries will have to weigh the risk versus cost in all likely scenarios.
It appears from what I got from the reading is that people were getting desperate. Just like fight or flight some run, other fight (by taking peoples resources) the ones with the means to take the resources start hording them. Some I think that the articles should have focused on a little bit more was the influence from foreign actors, most of them were not as they say in ethics beneficence, their involvement was not to the other countries benefit but their own. I could see how a future environmentalist could measure if this makes the situation worst in regards to the environmental issues a given country is going through. I would agree that some of the suggestions made by some of the authors could be a possible solution but defiantly good suggestion(s). Unifying with neighbors (by also addressing the ethnic tension issues too), creating policies that address the issue, and mitigation measures for when the inevitable happens.
References
Reuveny, R., 2007. Climate change-induced migration and violent conflict. Polit. Geogr. 26, 656–673. Via https://www.csun.edu/~dtf46560/630/Misc/Reuveny-ClimateChangeMigration-2007.pdf