The downside of Globalization: Environmental Displacement and the Concept of Global Justice.

Environmental Displacement – A Great Injustice

“Climate change is chiefly an issue of (in)justice, since it has been caused by the rich nations and poses risks upon the poor, who are the least responsible and the most vulnerable to the damages and risk associated with it” (Okereke & Schroeder).

The urgent rise of climate changes has raised fundamental questions of justice in global politics focused mainly on the vast discrepancies between the cause and effects of global warming and most importantly the uneven levels of consumption of fossil fuels (Brincat, 277). Whereas the justice insinuations of climate change are strongly accepted by the international climate regime, solutions to meaningfully address climate injustice are still developing based on various theories of justice (Maguire & Lewis, 2012, 16). Consider how environmental displacement, a direct cause of global warming,  is a great injustice according to one of the most highly held theory of justice (John Rawls) in defiance of its lack of consideration of the environment; and who you think should bear the costs of this injustice? Should it be equally distributed amid every state or should the states that have mainly caused this take more responsibility and repay the victims somehow? 

Environmental Displacement

In recent years the turmoil of the refugee crisis has agitated the world.  And, unfortunately, it is unlikely that this agitation will diminish as a new category of refugees emerge – environmental refugees. It is estimated that the numbers of environmental refugees will reach 50 million by 2020, and possibly triple to 150 million by 2050 (Lam, 2012). According to an United Nations Environment Programme report, an environmental refugee is distinguished as one who has been forced to leave their traditional habit, undeterminably because of an environmental disruption (natural/or triggered by human beings) that jeopardized their existence and/or seriously affected the standard of their life (El-Hinnawi, 1985). Prevailing scientific evidence suggests that climate change is the direct result of “greenhouse gas” emissions (footnote 13). Historically, industrialized countries have been attributed most of the responsibility for those emissions and past and present generations have gained economically and also enjoyed higher qualities of life from the technology that produced them (Bell, 6). Without much regard to, the costs of environmental degradation are disproportionally felt more by the poorest and most marginalized parts of the population, particularly in developing countries that often lack the ability to cope with this drastic changes (Borges, 2016, 77). The most pressing extreme weather events foreseeable and that have already began are desertification and flooding in islands and low-lying areas (Bell, 6). Below is actual evidence of a great silent injustice occurrence:

From this, it can be assumed that certain states have not only inflicted environmental change, but they have too created the setting of violations of human rights in developing countries (Borges, 2016, 77). A case brought to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (promotes and upholds basic rights and freedoms in the Americas), on the legal argument that the plaintiff’s human rights had been infringed and therefore violated on the grounds that the United Stated had failed to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions (Wagner & Goldberg, 2004). Although, the plaintiff’s appeal was unsuccessful, the case inspired the idea that rather than being an intangible phenomenon of natural sciences, global climate change is veritably very much a human process with demonstrable human cause and effect (Limon, 2009, 441). Thus, global warming should be treated like any other aspect of human interaction, by being placed within a human rights framework of responsibility, accountability and justice (ibid.).