Refugee Camps as Climate Traps: Measuring the Enviro-climatic Marginality of 922 Global Refugee Camps with Satellite Time Series Data
Abstract
As of writing, there are 19.9 million refugees under UN mandate in 126 countries who have fled war and political persecution. Despite the sheer size of this population and the tendency for intergenerational habitation of refugee camps, refugees are consistently excluded from national surveys and censuses meant to target the most marginalized, inform progress towards Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and improve measurements of poverty and living standards. The global refugee population is thus not only being "left behind" in pursuit of SDGs, refugees are also more likely to be trapped in intergenerational poverty and require special assistance to adapt to global environmental change. Indeed, more than two-thirds of refugees are experiencing a "protracted refugee scenario," defined by the UNHCR as a situation in which "basic rights and essential economic, social, and psychological needs remain unfulfilled after years in exile." Such conditions can exacerbate the potential for socio-spatial exclusion, economic isolation, and social conflict and economic instability.
Despite the widespread recognition that protracted refugee scenarios undermine refugee human rights and increase potential for conflict and instability in the host country, the enviro-climatic conditions and geographic isolation of the world's refugee camps have never been systematically evaluated. Using a suite of open access remote sensing, climate model, and geospatial datasets from 2000-2015, this study presents an unprecedented perspective on social-environmental consequences of protracted refugee situations and offers the first global assessment of camp-level condition and context at 922 UNHCR refugee camps in 60 countries. We find that refugee camps often share similar environmental or climatic conditions as formal settlements within a given host country, yet are consistently more isolated and, inevitably, vulnerable due to enclosure and land use policies that reflect and reinforce the securitization of refugees. Our results thus improve understanding of the potential for camps to act as 'climate traps', illuminate pathways towards mitigating protracted refugee scenarios that linger at the expense of refugee human rights, and aid in identifying shared pathways that support targeted investment in refugee livelihoods.- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2018
- Bibcode:
- 2018AGUFMIN44A..04V
- Keywords:
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- 0240 Public health;
- GEOHEALTHDE: 1630 Impacts of global change;
- GLOBAL CHANGEDE: 1980 Spatial analysis and representation;
- INFORMATICSDE: 4330 Vulnerability;
- NATURAL HAZARDS