Katrina Evacuees Join Environmental Refugees Worldwide

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- The hundreds of thousands of refugees from the devastation of Hurricane Katrina join 25 million people worldwide displaced by environmental catastrophes, events and processes, according to Lynda Schneekloth, professor of architecture at the University at Buffalo.

Schneekloth says that although the American public may not be aware of it, "according to the World Watch Institute, a leading source of information on the interactions among environmental, social, and economic trends, 58 percent of the world's refugees have been displaced by environmental calamities, significantly more than by war."

"Unless major reforms are undertaken now, it is predicted that there will be a sharp increase in environmental refugees over the next 40 years," she says.

"Katrina may provoke public discussion of new ethical and moral issues that we need to address, including the question of whether humans can do anything we want anywhere, without repercussions. If so, then perhaps we will begin to recognize the results of our actions and rethink them."

Schneekloth says, "We are usually so oblivious to issues like this that I have been surprised to see the media reporting, to a surprising degree, how human beings made this natural disaster into a catastrophe. They are discussing the incremental short-term decisions that permitted erosion of natural barriers to the sea, and the failure to improve dykes, levies and control mechanisms over time.

"This is good, because we definitely are complicit here," she says.

"We have badly 'managed' the Mississippi River; built extensively below sea level in a country that, unlike the Netherlands, has plenty of alternative land; we allowed thousands of people to live in flood prone areas; we permitted building in the wetlands and marshes that would ordinarily protect the coastline from storm surges, and so on and so on and so on."

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which advises the world's governments under the auspices of the UN, estimated in 2001 that by 2050, the world will have 150 million environmental refugees due mainly to the effects of coastal flooding, shoreline erosion and agricultural disruption.

Americans don't 'know' this, Schneekloth suggests, because the victims of mining disasters, deforestation, urbanization, deteriorating agricultural land, rising sea levels, industrialization and industrial pollution, are invisible to us, even if they "are" us. Their tragedies have been largely unexamined by the popular press and apparently have never registered on the political radar screen.

In fact, such refugees are not officially recognized within the narrow parameters of current international law. Even the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) only distinguishes between 'real' refugees (persecuted) and 'merely' displaced persons.

"This is the first time we've experienced a major population displacement in this country due to environmental catastrophe. We just haven't thought about it very much. It was something that happens to others," she says.

"We have been remarkably fortunate. As in the case of the bombing of the World Trade Towers, the Americans are appalled to realize that we, too, can be subject to a disaster of such scale, whatever the cause," she says.

"So now we have hundreds of thousands of environmental refugees spread over scores of states that need to be housed, fed, employed, medically treated, and so on. Their communities are simply gone or so destroyed that they cannot be rehabilitated, but will have to be rebuilt," she says, "and we will have to contend with the emotional and psychological afflictions common to refugees, as well.

"It will take a very long time to resolve this one, and, if our behavior doesn't change, along with public policy, it may just be the first of many terrible natural events exacerbated by our own actions."

Lynda Schneekloth
Professor of Architecture
716-829-3483 x201
lhs1@buffalo.edu