Bogumil Terminski Environmentally-Induced Displacement ... - Cedem

and “environmental refugees”), however, may raise some controversy. At asemantic level, they equate ecological groups of migrants with a refugee groupto which the standards of the 1951 Geneva Convention are applied.Environmental refugees do not constitute a separate or institutionallydeveloped legal category but rather a notional construct of a political andsocial sort. Even the rather synthetic characteristic of the most commonly usednotions, presented above, shows how a great terminological confusioncharacterises the description of the group of migrants currently discussed inthis section of the paper.The conceptual grid used in the description of categories of environmentalmigrants should, in my opinion, take into account three main factors. Firstly, itseems relevant to distinguish between categories of migrants based on theenvironmental nature of the factors (forced, coerced, or voluntary) causing achange of residence. In case of the imminent threat of the individual, it seemsreasonable to speak of displacemement on environmental grounds. If,conversely, these factors only make it difficult but not directly threaten thefunctioning of the individual in the area, it seems more appropriate to speakabout migration than displacement (however, the occurrence of long-term,gradually increasing environmental threats in a given area, such as the risingsea level around archipelagic states remains a contentious issue at this point.).Secondly, environmentally caused displacement or migration should representmovement of a relatively permanent nature. It is difficult to label anevacuation lasting a few hours to several days caused by, for example, localflooding in terms of an environmental “exile”. 81 Thirdly, it also seemsimportant to highlight the relationship between the systems currently operatingin the literature. Climatic and disaster-induced displacements are, in my view,subcategories of the broader, more fundamental category of environmentallyinduced displacement. Additionally, it is crucial to stress the importance of81T. Hammar, International migration, immobility and development. Multidisciplinary perspectives, 1997, p. 34;J.D. Unruh, M.S. Krol, N. Kilot, Environmental change and its implications for population migration, 2004, p.238.