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PARTICIPANTS IN ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT
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environment (Scholz, 1992). Studies have shown why settlers may fail to get
established and resort to damaging the environment and re-migrating (Moran, 1981).
Much depends on there being adequate incentives for sustainable land use (e.g. enough
return for labour, secure landholdings) and upon the attitude of settlers, things which
environmental management may be able to control. Resettlement planning should
benefit from adoption of a participatory approach (Hall, 1994).
Eco-refugees are people displaced by natural or human-induced environmental
disaster or environmental degradation (El-Hinnawi, 1985; Ramlogan, 1996) (Figure
12.2). Natural disasters such as floods, storms, volcanic eruption, soil degradation,
drought, or the arrival of a disease like malaria can cause people to move. In the
future the trigger to move may increasingly be one or more of the following: global
environmental change due to pollution, land degradation through poor land husbandry,
pollution, and non-conventional warfare. Eco-refugees could becomes a major
challenge for environmental managers in the future (Sinclair, 1990). There is also a
risk they might become a significant threat to global peace (Homer-Dixon, 1991;
Westing, 1992; Myers, 1993; Ramlogan, 1996). Döös (1997) noted that the countries
receiving most refugees so far have tended to respond by tightening border controls,
and there was a need to look beyond this and to address causes. Some developed
countries are seriously concerned about the possibility of an influx of eco-refugees
in the future (Nolch, 1994).
It has been claimed that the world’s poor are tending to be displaced to
disasterprone areas by the ‘politics and economics of exclusion’, and so the numbers
of refugees is likely to increase. There are regions prone to recurrent disasters, yet
FIGURE 12.2 Schematic illustration of the links between the major factors that can have an
influence upon, or reinforce, environmental degradation, resulting in an increased risk of
environmental migration (eco-refugees)
Source: Döös (1997:43, Fig. 1)

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people still settle them; for example, coastal Bangladesh, or Northeast Brazil, where
recurrent drought is blamed for hardship and relocation of poor people (although in
reality lack of land reform may be as much to blame) (Hall, 1978).
Some ‘natural’ catastrophes have an anthropogenic component—excessive
grazing makes land vulnerable to droughts, and global warming may raise the
incidence of severe weather events (Woehlcke, 1992). People displaced by ‘elemental
forces’ may have little warning; those shifted by gradual environmental degradation
should be better prepared, although the poor have little chance to adapt.
Often environmental causes are merely a trigger for relocation because the
poor have become more vulnerable or less able to recover from environmental
problems. A number of international agencies, notably the UN High Commission
for Refugees (UNHCR), have expertise on eco-refugees, and those concerned with
global environmental change have tried to predict likely future scenarios (McGregor,
1993; Myers, 1993; Döös, 1997).
The public
The public usually consists of more than one group of people who probably have
different, perhaps conflicting, views and goals. Powerful groups tend to dominate,
so the environmental manager may have to establish the needs of the weak, and
ensure that they are not ignored, yet work with the influential.