ecomigration could be a useful adaptation mecha-
nism. Climate change will challenge states and peo-
ples to be resilient in the face of resource constraints
and deteriorating conditions. Resource scarcity and
environmental degradation, which climate change
will amplify, led Indiana University professor Rafael
Reuveny to coin the term ecomigration. Ecomigra-
tion, he observed, may generate conflict throughout
the cycle (Reuveny 2007a).
Worse, the conflict is likely to be of high inten-
sity (Reuveny 2007b). Indeed, the bigger and faster
the migration, the greater the potential for conflict
(Reuveny 2007b). Ecomigration will presumptively
originate in underdeveloped, failing, and failed states,
i.e., the ones most vulnerable to climate change in the
first place (Reuveny 2007b). A compounding factor is
that poor states, ones that depend disproportionately
on the environment for sustainment (e.g., agriculture),
are particularly conflict prone (Reuveny 2007a).
Climate change is a multi-causal, multi-dimen-
sional phenomenon: extreme weather events (e.g., in
the U.S. in 2005 and Pakistan in 2010); encroaching
seas that over-wash entire island states or portions
of land-based states, big and small, affecting major
population centers or features on which maritime
zones and seabed claims are measured; and, creep-
ing desertification, especially that which, due to un-
sustainable irrigation, reduces the productivity of
major food-growing regions. All of these conditions,
and others, may precipitate or aggravate migration,
temporary and permanent, within a state and across
borders (Betts 2009). What is left behind may or may
not be remediable, and if not, the flow cannot be re-
versed. This consideration—irreversibility—has not
yet received much attention, but should.
sharon
(sharon)
#1