Environmental Displacement and John Rawls' “General Conception” of Justice

Abstract

This article uses John Rawls' general conception of justice to identify some of the difficulties faced by those people who are forced to move due to environmental stress factors. It aims to highlight that environmental displacement leads to inequalities as injustices. It then showcases these losses and the risks intrinsic to environmental displacement. Finally, it problematizes the lack of legal protection for environmentally displaced persons also as an injustice issue and urges states to consider a just model of protection.

The idea prescribed by John Rawls known as his “general conception” of justice entails that any inequalities should have beneficial consequences for all:

“All social values–liberty and opportunity, income and wealth, and the bases of self-respect–are to be distributed equally unless an unequal distribution of any, or all, of these values is to everyone's advantage.”¹

The theory has application as regards environmentally displaced persons, that is, people who are forced to move due to “environmental stresses” (environmental degradation, war, industrial and chemical accidents, climate change-induced floods, droughts, soil erosion, water dearth, deforestation, agriculture shortages, and natural disasters). Rawls enables us to identify some of the difficulties faced by those who are displaced, especially those who cross, or potentially cross, borders, and explains why exploring alternative forms of legal and social protection may be essential. Environmental displacement in a Rawlsian manner can create further inequalities: population pressures, poverty, loss of property, inequalities in accessing food, and outbreak and spread of diseases. The costs of environmental degradation are disproportionally being borne by the poorest and most marginalized parts of the population, especially in the developing states that often have limited capacity to cope, for example, with climate variability and extremes.² In a way, certain countries have not only imposed environmental change but they have also created the environment of violations of human rights in developing countries.³

Justice, however, is an essentially contested term and means many different things to many different people, scholars, and theorists. It is, therefore, not a stagnant concept, but it is in continuous development. Whereas some authors such as Hugo Grotius and Alfred Thayer Mahan consider justice as not purely a function of power and egotism, others discard it and see it as a tactic for “misrepresentation, or propaganda, and assume that it masks a more basic opportunism or pursuit of self interest.”⁴ Many scholars attempt to tackle the verbosity and conceptual definition of justice. In the hands of Jeremy Betham and John Stuart Mill, utilitarianism, for example, seeks to capitalize on the “goods” for society in general. It seeks to “maximize happiness,” disregarding the aspect of distributive justice or issues of inequity and inequality.⁵ However, following Rawls' line of thought, justice prohibits any inequalities, except if they work to everyone's advantage. The outcome of environmental displacement creates not only impoverishment but also injustices. Using Rawls' conceptual lens of justice enables us to focus on paths for equitable resource distribution in terms of costs and benefits simultaneously, encouraging goals of global human and environmental protection. For us and for the sake of our argument, it is therefore important that we hold on to Rawls' particular conception of injustice.

Environmentally Induced Displacement: Inequalities As Injustices

The effects of environmental change have been described as the “defining human development issue of our generation”⁶ and probably “the biggest humanitarian and economic challenge that the developing world will face in the coming decades.”⁷ It is now widely recognized that large-scale cross-border environmental degeneracy impacts on human beings and their surroundings and that this environmental degradation is largely due to anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions that are primarily credited to developed countries. Its noticeable effects are found in extreme droughts and heat waves, floods and hurricanes, the sea level rise and submersing low-lying coastal areas, and other recurrently extreme weather conditions. Although the effects of environmental change may affect us indiscriminately, they will be felt more acutely in some parts of the world than others.⁸ By 1990, the First Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) foresaw that the largest single impact of environmental change could be on forced human displacement. Today, experts estimate that by 2050, the number of environmentally displaced persons will be between 50 and 200 million,⁹ either within their own countries or across borders, on a permanent or temporary basis.¹⁰ Although scientific uncertainty surrounds these numbers, in general, there will always be uncertainty surrounding the impacts of environmental issues.¹¹ The forced displacement of millions of people in the drought-stricken Horn of Africa is yet more clear evidence of the causal link between environmental change and forced human displacement.¹² With weather-related natural disasters projected to increase both in frequency and intensity in several parts of the world as global average temperatures continue to rise over the next decades,¹³ environmental change-related displacement is becoming part of what UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon has depicted as “the new normal.”¹⁴ It is in this context that a pertinent question arises: Is environmentally induced displacement an injustice issue?

Income and wealth

Environmentally induced displacement and the lack of coordinated actions and resettlement plans can impoverish people. The loss of property, community networks, work, means of subsistence, home, in sum, and people's humanity due to environmental degradation determines a loss of human and material resources. Michael Cernea categorizes these losses in a “model of eight potential risks intrinsic to displacement”.¹⁵ Even though Cernea's research work concentrated on development-induced displacement, his model can be generally applied to environmentally induced displacement and the consequences of forced movement. The model outlines the following risks:

1. Landlessness–The loss of land eradicates the basic structures of people's productive and commercial activities as well as their livelihoods. It is the main form of poverty and decapitalization as the loss is both natural and human.

2. Joblessness–The loss of work in urban and rural settings is high, especially for those working in industries, services, or agriculture. Creating new jobs in the countries where people flee due to environmental degradation is often dismissed by both home and host state countries. Unemployment is often high and endures for long periods after they flee or when the actual physical relocation has been concluded.

3. Marginalization–The result of forced movement due to environmental stresses leads to marginalization of the fleeting population due to the loss of earnings and lack of opportunities in the host country, where human capital is ultimately considered obsolete. Economic marginalization often leads to social and psychological marginalization with a decrease in social status, loss of perspective and self-confidence, and a sense of injustice and vulnerability.

4. Food insecurity–Falling beyond the poverty line, people become hungry culminating in chronic undernourishment.

5. Increased morbidity and mortality–Environmental displacements put people's health at risk. The psychological stress and trauma of relocating are sometimes accompanied by outbreak of diseases (e.g., parasitic and vector-borne diseases). Unsafe water, shortages of food supplies, and sewage conditions put many at risk, especially the most vulnerable (older people, children, and the disabled).

6. Loss of access to common property–The loss of access to common property implies loss of income as well as livelihoods (pastures, forests, water courses, quarries, burial sites, and so on).

All the mentioned human and material resources are lost when people are forced to move due to environmental depleting conditions. Although some of these “social goods” might have been owned or not by the displaced (such as property), and jobs might have or have not been owned also by them, the collective effect of loss of assets (and even sometimes the prospect of loss of one's country, such as in case of disappearance of many island states) may launch them into impoverishment. These “social goods” can, therefore, be subsumed within Rawls' general conception of justice.¹⁶ These “social goods” are lost due to environmental degradation conditions mostly caused by the developed world and in many cases with the complicity of the developing world.¹⁷ These conditions, in turn, create life-threatening circumstances for the populace and inequalities that compel them to migrate. Domestic laws and international legal standards are ill-equipped to grant them protection. The outcome of environmental displacement can, therefore, create injustices.

The condition of environmental injustice due to displacement is directly linked to the global stratified structure of economic and political power of the developed world that is able to change or force environmental burdens on fragile states.¹⁸ This is due to the lack of adequate legal structures, environmental policies, and sanctions, together with the acceptance and connivance of weak states in the depletion of their resources by developed states for economic gains. As a result, developed states use the environment at their own expense, creating a vicious circle of dependency, impoverishment, and displacement of people from the developing world. The unbalance between the core and the periphery has been the rule rather than the exception.¹⁹

Liberty and opportunity

Forced displacement due to environmental conditions leads to some extent to curtailment in people's liberty. According to Rawls, liberty and opportunity are goods subsumed to the general conception of justice. Inequalities are not to be created except if they work to everyone's advantage. In this respect, developed countries create inequalities toward developing countries: they are the most responsible for environmental degradation, not to mention climate change. They are also the most powerful in negotiating any enforceable treaty on these matters. Furthermore, “[t]he North is likely to use its position of privilege and power to maximize the benefits it receives and minimize its costs, even at the expense of justice and equity” [of people from the South].²⁰ This means that the North is leaving the South without options as they are somehow being forced to move (and resettle elsewhere) by environmental conditions/degradation that were not created by them. This power imbalance between parties determines the limitation of people's liberty and opportunity, as in many cases they cannot chose where to go. As a result, developing countries are dependent on the mercy of entry, protection, and aid from developed countries or neighboring states when environmental conditions degrade to the extent that they are no longer habitable (e.g., due to pollution and depletion of natural resources, desertification, or in the case of disappearing island states).

Bases of self-respect

Rawls' idea of self-respect is conceptualized as a “good life” journey that is “worth” pursuing. This entails having a life-plan and a general conception of a good life that is rewarding, where people are able to develop their own capacities, and in addition (and not withstanding the communitarian critic) have a sense of belonging to a community. Thus, any inequality that is not beneficial to the community as such is unjust.²¹ From this perspective, this lack of social belonging and social networks from displacement leads to inequalities and loss of self-respect. In line with Cernea's model of potential risks intrinsic to displacement, this leads to the following:

7. Homelessness–Loss of shelter and loss of place (despite sometimes only being temporary) for many displaced people; however, for some, it puts them in a deteriorating position with worse housing standards, which becomes a chronic condition. It also not only alienates their standard of living but also their own living and cultural environment.

8. Social disintegration–The loss of community networks, trade paths, knowledge, and traditions formal and informal management systems. Loss of leaders and leadership, loss of power, and disintegrated communities, that is, the snowballing effect of destruction of the “social fabric.”

Despite differences between Cernea's and Rawls' meaning of losses in social bases for self-respect, there is a link between them. The loss of their cultural environment, identity, and networks is probably going to affect people's network of support, their own credibility, their own view of a good life, and their thoughts of whether their own good is worth achieving. Equal effect is also to derive from the loss of community networks. From Rawls' perspective, these social structures on which people rely are part of the general conception of justice.²² This is why any social scheme or resettlement without necessary legal and social protection (i.e., that would deprive people) would be unjust. “In resettlement after resettlement similar patterns reappear (…). Vital social networks and life-support systems for families are weakened or dismantled. Authority systems are debilitated or collapse. Groups lose their capacity to self-manage. The society suffers a demonstrable reduction in its capacity to cope with uncertainty. It becomes qualitatively less than its previous self. The people may physically persist, but the community that they formed part of is no more.”²³

It is worth mentioning two additional risks inherent to displacement, highlighted by Robert Muggah²⁴ and Theodore Downing.²⁵

9. Loss of community services–This includes loss of healthcare and educational services, and especially the loss or decrease in opportunities for the development of children's knowledge, skills, and education.

10. Violation of human rights–Environmental displacement may lead to and/or threaten economic, social, civil, and political human rights, such as the right to life, right to adequate food, right to health, right to water, and right to adequate housing.²⁶ Actions may lead to degrading treatment, arbitrary arrest, temporary or permanent deprivation of a person's rights, and the loss of the right to be heard. These violations can be carried out by states or nonstate actors. In addition, communal violence may occur once people settle elsewhere (internally or across the border).

Environmentally Displaced Persons and the Lack of Legal Protection As An Injustice Issue

From the above, one can infer that environmental displacement creates inequalities and is an injustice issue. If so, do states have not only individually but also especially collectively an obligation to grant legal protection to those who are environmentally displaced, in particular those who could (potentially) cross the border?

Current state of legal protection at the crossroads

In its 1985 report for the United Nations Environment Program entitled Environmental Refugees, El-Hinnawi identified a new group of persons known as “environmental refugees,” that is, “those people who have been forced to leave their traditional habitat, temporarily or permanently, because of a marked environmental disruption (natural and/or triggered by people) that jeopardized their existence and/or seriously affected the quality of their life”.²⁷ The current legal definition of “refugee” in the 1951 Geneva Convention or Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees (CRSR) on the status of refugees excludes those who flee from man-made or naturally driven environmental disasters.²⁸ The Convention was largely modeled as a response to postwar needs, emphasizing “persecution” or the belief of persecution by the individual's own government, as opposed to the needs of the modern age: “an era of increasing international investment in developing countries, a continuing international waste trade and growing industrialization.”²⁹ As a result, “those forced to migrate across borders because of depleting environmental conditions have little, if any, recourse to protection.”³⁰ Even though some authors claim that the CRSR was not drafted with environmental migrants in mind,³¹ when, in the absence of persecution, but where there are “grave [environmental] circumstances” and the government is unable to grant effective protection, could environmental migrants be characterized as environmental refugees?³² Could the refugee definition be adjusted to include them? How much are environmentally displaced people protected by existing human rights guarantees? How best can international human rights law and/or environmental law be adapted to protect environmentally displaced people? Or is the best way to protect and promote the human rights of affected communities to create a new legal instrument to confront the issue of environmental displaced people?

Considerations on a Model of Protection of Environmentally Displaced Persons

Governments are generally not required to protect or afford special legal status to displaced people entering their territory because of environmental conditions. However, as environmental degradation in the developing world advances causing a new era of mixed and complex international migration, preventing people from access to healthcare, water, food, air, and land, among other basic human rights, an enhanced level of protection may be needed. This legal protection might be further justified bearing in mind the major proponents of environmental injustices, that is, the developed world. “As the interlinked issues of protection and responsibility rise up in the [global environmental agenda] […] more work on this relationship is vital to ensuring that protection is provided as efficiently and effectively as possible.”³³ Alleged human rights violations by transnational actors, complicit and corrupt governments, and the overall environmental impact of industrialized nations may corroborate the collective human right obligations toward environmental displacement and the need to grant them specific international legal protection.

At a scholarly level, proposals for legal protection of environmentally displaced persons have varied in content and imagination, with authors balancing their normative proposals between hard and soft law approaches. In this context, scholarship-coordinated efforts have abounded, with many proposing the treaty model approach.³⁴ Environmental scholars in Belgium have developed the most complete publication to date, a Draft Convention on the International Status of Environmentally Displaced Persons.³⁵ Less ambitious, but also relying on existing mechanisms and treaties, some scholars have suggested a sui generis protection that would consist of adding a Protocol to the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC),³⁶ or a adding a Protocol to the European Convention Human Rights (ECHR), concerning the right to a healthy and safe environment as a means of “enhancing the human rights protection mechanisms vis-à-vis the challenges of climate change and environmental degradation processes.”³⁷ Additional proposals have consisted of extended legal protection, or of adding an amendment or additional Protocol to the CRSR.³⁸ Professor Jane McAdam has favored a better implementation of the Guiding Principles of Internal Displacement that could usefully inform a framework relating to cross-border environmental-related movement.³⁹ Some authors also favor strengthening “soft law” as an interim measure before there is a global consensus on a binding document for the protection of environmental displacement.⁴⁰ The building of a gradual consensus to address the challenges of cross-border displacement in the context of disasters and climate change has been the cornerstone of the so-called Nansen Initiative.⁴¹ Although all of them are worthy and merit recognition, among other things because they draw attention and offer insightful solutions into enhanced legal protection options surrounding environmental displacement, none of them address the matter all-inclusively from a normative and pragmatic/strategic point of view. This is because the protection of environmentally displaced persons warrants states to take a holistic approach to protection in all phases of displacement–from, during, and after displacement. This is particularly necessary, given that the solutions that can be envisaged for those who are displaced and (potentially) cross an international border due to environmental factors have to be conceptualized and combined with measures to avoid displacement or to adapt to the conditions of a changing environment.

A new model of legal protection for environmentally displaced people must be carefully (re)conceptualized.⁴² Any model of protection has to be associated with a model of social support. If protection of environmentally displaced people is to become a reality, then there is an increasing need of a global and holistic approach to protection. This means that the letter and spirit of the law must fully reflect the needs of environmentally displaced people and be inclusive of the aforementioned “general conception of justice.” As previously seen, Rawls' contractarian theory of justice persuades people to make a society that is fair to all. Inequalities are devised as a way to grant the most benefits to the most disadvantaged. It seeks to “minimize the pain.”⁴³ The current state of play of environmental degradation and displacement links all these ideas together, ensuring a maximization of goods for the entire population, creating a just society for all, that is, a distributive justice between North and South, rich or poor, decrease inequalities, and most importantly realize people's human rights. We must continue working in this direction.

Footnotes

Author Disclosure Statement

No competing financial interests exist.