Credit: Sarah Fajardo/ CRS
WHERE: World Social Forum, Dakar, Senegal. Universite du Chiekh Anta Diop
WHEN: 08:30 – 11:30 am Tuesday 08 February 2011
WHO: Mr. Ahmadou Kante, IOM Regional Office, Dakar; Mr. Augustine Njamnshi, Representative of Pan African Justice Alliance (PACJA), Cameroon, Ms. Annette Malulu, Caritas Zambia; Mr. Marcellin Ndiaye, Caritas Senegal; Mr. Sok Sakhan, Caritas Cambodia; Mr. Francis Atul Sarker, Caritas Bangladesh; Mr. Raymond Yoro, Caritas Niger; Ms. Christine Campeau, Caritas Internationalis. Facilitator: Mr. Michel Roy, Secours Catholique (Caritas France)
WHAT: Workshop on Climate Change and Forced Migration hosted by Caritas Internationalis. Caritas speakers will introduce case studies from Niger, Bangladesh, and Senegal, and models for addressing the problem from Cambodia and Zambia. Speakers from UN organisations will also bring their expertise by highlighting the debates around the legal framework for this new type of migrant, and presents the difficulties in implementing new protection mechanisms and policies.
CONTACT: Christine Campeau, Caritas Internationalis, Climate Change and Food Security Advisor, Tel: + 39 06 698 797 09, campeau@caritas.va
Hello and thank you for this article. So-called environmentally induced migration is multi-level problem. According to Essam El-Hinnawi definition form 1985 environmental refugees as those people who have been forced to leave their traditional habitat, temporarily or permanently, because of a marked environmental disruption (natural or triggered by people) that jeopardised their existence and/or seriously affected the quality of their life. The fundamental distinction between `environmental migrants` and `environmental refugees` is a standpoint of contemporsry studies in EDPs.
According to Bogumil Terminski it seems reasonable to distinguish the general category of environmental migrants from the more specific (subordinate to it) category of environmentally displaced people.
According to Norman Myers environmental refugees are “people who can no longer gain a secure livelihood in their homelands because of drought, soil erosion, desertification, deforestation and other environmental problems, together with associated problems of population pressures and profound poverty”.