Environmental Consequences Of Environmental Change And Migration

Environmental change and migration can have far-fetched effects on human security and can consequently pose extreme challenges. For migrants and their families, extreme environmental events and gradual changes in habitat have enormous human security implications. The risks to public health alone are dire and can include direct impacts such as heat stress, injuries, air pollution and cancer, plus ecosystem- mediated impacts such as increased risk of infectious diseases, malnutrition, vector-, food- and water-borne diseases. Natural and industrial disasters can cause substantial damage and destruction to basic infrastructure and services. They also tend to result in prolonged family separations and disruptions to health care and education services.

Situations of sudden mass displacement can have substantial environmental repercussions on the migrant host area. In the past, swathes of land have been deforested to set up camps or settlements. Displaced persons themselves may resort to unsustainable resource management in order to make ends meet in extraordinary and protracted circumstances. Some development and land conservation initiatives have had similar environmental effects as resettled populations that are poorly equipped with alternative livelihoods or who have been settled in unworkable areas overexploit natural resources. Where affordable housing and sound sanitation are unavailable, migrants may take to felling trees and procuring coastal sands for construction material, and to consuming contaminated water and food supplies. Migrant homes are often precariously built, in contravention of building codes, and situated on floodplains or sparsely forested hillsides, or next to mangrove swamps and tidal flats. Such coping tactics not only accelerate deforestation and soil erosion, they also limit the water drainage capacity of increasingly covered surface areas and the population’s ability to access safe, clean water, resulting in further public health

Although the people who cross borders in order to avoid the effects of climate change and environment disasters are supported by the United Nations commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) through assistance in cases where government cannot, but there is no obligation on the host states to provide any temporary identifications to such refugees and if they enter host states undocumented, a situation arises which subsequently makes them vulnerable to criminal sanctions and