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ENVIRONMENTAL MIGRATION: “MOVING THE DECKCHAIRS ON THE TITANIC”

Recent waves of economic migrants into Europe are likely to be dwarfed by future flows of environmental refugees from drought-hit regions such as north Africa, according to a new study from the Optimum Population Trust.

The Earth’s capacity to absorb migrants displaced by climate change, population growth and the spread of deserts is coming up against “key environmental limits,” says the OPT. Europe, now becoming a prime overspill destination for people displaced by environmental and population pressures in sub-Saharan Africa, is already suffering severe droughts and soil erosion. Other countries in Africa are meanwhile beset by tensions resulting from loss of fertile land and population growth.

“The growing influx of migrants arriving from Africa via Senegal and the Canary Islands, running recently at 20,000 arrivals a month [Correction: See notes below], has already prompted action at an EU level and is almost certainly a taste of the future,” the OPT adds. “Recent waves of economic migration into the EU are likely to be dwarfed by future flows of environmental refugees.” It points to UN calculations that 135 million people globally are at risk of being displaced by desertification and that some 60 million people are expected to move from the desertified areas in sub-Saharan Africa towards northern Africa and Europe in the next 20 years.*

In Sudan, for instance, where nomads are in conflict with farmers over shrinking amounts of fertile land, the impact of displaced peoples is greatest on neighbouring Chad, already suffering serious ecological and population conflicts. “Other continents will only be able to take desertification ‘refugees’ at the cost, in most cases, of serious damage to their own environment,” the study says.

Rosamund McDougall, of the OPT’s Advisory Council, said: “The growing scarcity of water and fertile land, coupled with continuing population growth, have created a situation where just about the entire planet, and not just the developing world, is under strain. This year we have had droughts throughout southern and western Europe, and there are more in prospect – as well as warnings of blackouts and brownouts because of shortages of energy.”

“It’s our humanitarian duty to provide help and shelter for environmental refugees but we must also recognise that large-scale migration in these circumstances is, at best, like moving the deckchairs on the Titanic – it will just shift the problem from one place to another. At worst, it will hugely intensify it since much of the damage to the global environment is caused by high-impact consumption in the developed world – and migrants rapidly become high-impact consumers.**

“Real ways to reduce the strains on land and water must include making family planning much more widely available and recognising population growth for what it is – one of the main causes of environmental crisis.”

The OPT study, published ahead of the UN conference on climate change in Nairobi*** and in the wake of the Stern report on the costs of climate change, says that climate change and desertification pose a serious threat to global food security. An estimated six million hectares of productive land, an area almost half the size of England, are lost to desertification globally every year. Arable land per person declined from 0.32 hectares in 1961-63 to 0.21 hectares in 1997-99 and is expected to drop further to 0.16 hectares by 2030.* According to the Earth Policy Institute, this year’s world grain harvest is projected to fall short of consumption for the sixth time in the last seven years. World stockpiles at the end of the crop year were projected to drop to 57 days of consumption, the shortest buffer since the 56-day low in 1972 that triggered a doubling of grain prices.

By the end of 2005 there were 20.8 million refugees and displaced people worldwide, up six per cent on the previous year, and by the end of the decade, according to a study by UN experts, as many as 50 million people could be escaping the effects of “creeping environmental deterioration.”*

However, desertification and soil erosion are increasingly serious problems in the developed world, with 30 per cent of the US hit by desertification, a third of Spain at risk of turning into desert and large areas of southern Italy also affected. Europe's 25 member states lose 250 million tonnes of soil a year to erosion, roughly half a tonne per head of population. In the UK three million tonnes of soil are washed into river and drainage systems annually, from over 40 per cent of UK farmland officially categorised as being ‘vulnerable’ to soil erosion. ****

Rosamund McDougall said soil loss in Italy, caused by water erosion, salinisation and urbanisation, was turning large parts of the south and the Mediterranean coast, mainly Sicily, Sardinia, and Apulia, into arid land. “But Italian mothers are helping to reduce environmental stress. With a fertility rate of 1.3 children, they’re allowing the number of Italian urbanisers and climate changers to decrease to a more sustainable level.”

Global human population is projected by the UN to grow by 2.5 billion to 9.1 billion by 2050, the OPT points out. “If the average worldwide total fertility rate (2.65 in 2000-05) could be reduced by just half a child per woman (to 2.15, just above the replacement rate of 2.1), world population would still reach 7.7 billion in 2050, but there would be 1.4 billion fewer climate changers and 1.4 billion fewer to feed.”

NOTES

* Figures from UN sources, including United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification. Desertification is defined as “land degradation in arid, semi-arid and dry sub-humid areas resulting from various factors, including climatic variations and human activities.” (UNCCD ).

**A EU citizen’s ecological footprint – a measure of global environmental impact – is more than four times greater than an African’s, according to the Living Planet Report 2006 (WWF), published in October. A Briton’s footprint is nearly six times greater than a citizen of Sudan or Chad. The Living Planet Report, co-authored by the Institute of Zoology and the Global Footprint Network, calculated that in 2003 humanity's ecological footprint was 25 per cent larger than the planet's biological capacity.

*** The second meeting of the parties to the Kyoto Protocol, and the 12th session of the conference of the parties to the Climate Change Convention, will be held in Nairobi, Kenya, November 6-17 2006.

****Figures from UN and European Soil and Water Protection (SOWAP) project.

The OPT report, Desertification and migration, is available on the Briefings & Submissions page.

Migrant arrivals figure: In January 2007 the EU said that the number of migrants from sub-Saharan Africa arriving on the Canary Islands had risen to 31,000 in 2006, six times more than in 2005. About half a million illegal immigrants are estimated to enter the EU each year.