La Strada Documentation Center

Environmentally Displaced People: Understanding the Linkages Between Environmental Change, Livelihoods and Forced Migration

Document number
2401
Date
2008
Title
Environmentally Displaced People: Understanding the Linkages Between Environmental Change, Livelihoods and Forced Migration
Author/publisher
Refugees Studies Center
Availability
View/save PDF version of this document
Document type(s)
Research/Study/Analysis,
Keywords
Economy in transition, Youth employment, State socialism, Socio-Economic transition, Discrimination, Unemployment, Poverty, Community development, Health care, Social security, Social exclusion, Drugs abuse, Health, HIV/AIDS, Globalisation;
Summary
Challenges related to migration and the environment include rapid urbanisation and sprawl, deforestation, soil erosion, agro-chemical pollution, water shortages, abandonment of rural areas, declining health and physical resilience, unsustainable agricultural and production systems, difficulties in building effective governance systems and the effects of migrants on source and destination communities and ecosystems. Focus on the generalised potential of climate change is obscuring evidence from the developing world of adaptability and livelihood resilience in the face of environmental change. This experience suggests that development policies should be predicated on proactive reduction of vulnerability rather than automatic assumptions of mass forced migration.
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