Title:
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The political ecology of environmental displacement and the United Nations' response to the challenge of environmental refugees
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Currently there are approximately 25 million people displaced by environmental
conditions, including resource scarcity, natural hazards and ecosystem degradation.
By 2050, as many as 200 million people are predicted to be forced from their homes
by changing environmental conditions brought about or exacerbated by climate
change. Yet despite the scale of this problem, there is no international policy on their
status. This thesis aims, first, to investigate some of the challenges to devising
international political solutions to the problem and second, investigate these
challenges empirically by undertaking a comprehensive analysis of the United
Nations' current approach to the problem.
Drawing on political ecology, the thesis analyses debates and approaches to the
problem of environmental displacement. Part 1 of the thesis investigates academic
debates, particularly within International Relations. Part 2 provides a critical
evaluation of how the United Nations approaches environmental displacement.
Although its main agency responsible for refugees does not recognise
environmentally displaced people as refugees there are nevertheless a number of
United Nations' bodies concerned with this growing problem. The study argues that
the United Nations' main approach, namely sustainable development, has serious
limitations because it does not recognise the underlying socio-political causes of
environmental displacement, including how the distribution of resources and the
socio-environmental costs and benefits of development drive this phenomenon.
The thesis concludes that as environmental displacement is likely to increase in the
near future, a supplemental category of environmental refugee that recognises these
socio-political causes is an important step to establishing coherent international
responsesto the problem. In this regard,a nd despitet he political difficulties of states
accepting a new refugee category, the United Nations can nevertheless play a
constructive role in promoting dialogue and establishing a formal operational
framework for action on environmental displacement in the international system
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