I thought I would use this opportunity to ask friends and others who are interested in EU politics their opinion, in order to bring back some innovative and wide ranging? answers. Feel free to write short or long answers. What do you think is, or should be, the EU’s next big project?

Some ideas that are suggested:

1. Should it be to battle climate change and at the same time ensure energy security for its citizens? If so, what do you believe is the best avenue to reach this goal?
2. Is it more important to create a true foreign policy, so that the EU can talk with one voice and be upon a level with major powers such as Russia, India and China?
3. Or is more institutional reform needed in the years to come, if so why? Could federalism be the answer?

Or should the EU focus on more issue specific policies that “matter” more to the citizens, such as:

1. Making its main priority to battle poverty, inequality and unemployment within the EU?
2. To improve research and education within the EU, in order to make Europe develop the best minds in order to be at the cutting-edge of innovation and wealth creation in the world? Is the new 2020 strategy that Barroso is talking about the answer?
3. To secure the borders of Europe and at the same time ensure more legal ways of immigration and protecting those in need of protection?
4. Or should it be a more ambitious enlargement policy and strive to include the Western Balkans and Turkey in the EU?

What is your opinion? What do you believe should be the EU’s next big project?

It has been a while since my last update here and I intend to do something about it now. There have been many interesting things happening around the world on the issue of environmentally displaced persons. A side-event at the climate change conference in Poznan dealt with the issue, so did a conference hosted by the Refugees Studies Centre in Oxford in the beginning of January, the Parliamentary Assembly in the Council of Europe debated the issue and more.

Climate Change and displacement in Poznan

The side event “Climate change, migration and forced displacement: the new humanitarian frontier?” was hosted by the UNHCR and gathered many of the leading experts on the topic. You can find the video from the conference and some of the papers presented on the conference here.

Furthermore, the High Commissioner for Refugees, António Guterres, seems to have followed up on the issue by including comments related to it in an address the Security Council on 8 January 2009 and stated that:

“Conflict, climate change and extreme deprivation will inter-relate, strengthening each other as a cause of displacement”

Various conferences on the topic

• Conference hosted at the Oxford – The Refugees Studies Centre in Oxford and International Migration Institute hosted a conference around the same topic in the first week of January. I have not found any conference papers yet, but you can read more about the details here.
• Conference on climate change and displacement 20 January in The Hague - This week in the Netherlands, an event on the issue was conducted by the Society for International Development (SID), read more about it here. The author of the report “Climate Change, Migration and Displacement, Vikram Odedra Kolmannskog of the Norwegian Refugee Council and Franck Lazcko (IOM) was two of the key note speakers.  
• Conference in the US in February - The topic is “Global responses to ecomigration and environmental disasters: the role of US and International Policy” hosted by Fordham University School of Law, publishers of the Fordham Environmental Law Review. It seems quite interesting and you can more about here.

Blog on forced migration

I can also recommend you this very good blog. It is more frequently updated than my own, but it covers much broader topics related to forced migration.

Recent news, papers and presentations on the issue

The increasing interest in the subject of environmental displacement has really increased the number of conferences, papers and news related to the topic, just in the past few months. Here are just a few of the things that recently has been published:

• The Council of Europe debated a resolution in the Parliamentary Assembly right before christmas on the topic of Environmentally induced migration and displacement: a 21st century challenge.

• Anthony Oliver-Smith of the United Nations University just put his presentation on Displacements and Diasporas: Human Rights, Global Climate Change and Forced Migration in the 21st Century.

• Asia/Pacific: High tides, floods, storms force islanders to displacement. Much good research on the effects of natural disasters in this region.

• The climate change – displacement nexus, by Walter Kälin, Representative of the Secretary-General on the Human Rights of Internally Displaced Persons and Co-Director, Brookings-Bern Project on Internal Displacement.

Well, this is just some of the recent events that I have found, but if you have information about something else, please feel free to leave a comment on the blog or write directly to me.

In an explanatory note from the presidency (20/09/02) regarding article 15 entitled ’serious harm’, which formulates the basis of how people can receive subsidiary (complementary) protection from a member state, I found this quote from the chair of the negotiations: “By using the wording “acts or treatment” it is ensured that only man-made situations, and not for instance situations arising natural disasters or situations of famine, will lead to the granting of subsidiary protection.”  

As far as I can tell, this also resulted in recital 26 in the final directive: ”Risks to which a population of a country or a section of the population is generally exposed do normally not create in themselves an individual threat which would qualify as serious harm.” Therefore, it seems clear that the policy makers, in this case the member states, wanted a narrow protection regime not granting people fleeing from natural disasters, such as floods or droughts, protection under the Qualification Directive.

The European Parliament sidelined by the Council?

The Greens MEP Jean Lambert, who was the European Parliament’s Rapporteur  on the issue in 2002, confirmed this interpretation of the negotiations in the Council today. Lambert, a staunch and renowned supporter of a more humanitarian protection regime in the EU, said to me during the interview that: “It became crystal clear that it was no point of pushing the agenda for (environmental refugees), there was no majority… We had enough with keeping humanitarian protection in there along with asylum. That was the real battle”. It seemed one of the challenges was the lack of co-decision procedure used in the area, which would have given the Parliament an equal say in the negotiations. Lambert said the Council could just “put the EP opinion on shelf and not do anything about it.” However, Lambert also added that co-decision may also have led to much more struggles in the Parliament, as the majority party (EPP) does not support a widening of the scope of protection at the European level.

It is hard to see how many, if any, of the 88 amendments proposed by the Parliament was included by the chair of the Council. The Report from the EP came late into what seems as very heated debates between the member states on a number of the key issues. For example, the Council had already more or less finished their negotiations and seriously restricted the scope of Article 15, when the EP-report was published on 8th of October 2002.

The only actor to mention environmental refugees in the process

The EP appears to have been the only institution/actor that brought up the issue of refugees fleeing from various forms of environmental degradation and disasters. They wrote in the their report of 8.10.02: ”Equally, while current definitions of asylum seekers deal only with those suffering persecution, or the fear of it, at the hands of human agents, we are ignoring the growing number of people who are forced to leave their homes due to poverty and environmental degradation. These people equally need protection and there is an urgent need to devise the appropriate instruments and policies of prevention. Maybe that should provide step 2 of a Common European Asylum Policy.” The comment did not encourage the Council to regard environmental refugees in the Qualification Directive at the time. It will be interesting to see whether they will follow up on this in the amendment of Article 15 later this year.

I will now move on and analyze the academic debate on the issue and I will hopefully have some interesting results on the end of this week. As always, feel free to contribute if you have knowledge or questions. I still have a few weeks left before I have to finish researching. You can also read more on my climate refugee page, where I list most of my sources.