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A report from Financial Times pointed out that after Beijing made the record of three-month serious air pollution, some companies responsible for foreigners’ residential services were preparing for them to leave Beijing even though there was no specific data about the number of foreigners who would leave Beijing.
Again the new “environmental immigrants” place the environment problems of big cities in the center of public opinions.
Environmental immigrants in cities, no matter moving internationally or among different cities, are for the purpose to improve their living environment. But they still worry about the turbulence and immigration as there are many uncertain factors such as whether the new life will be better or whether they will be accepted by the new place. These worries, however, can’t prevent the trend of environmental immigration. According to UN statistics, there will be 50 million “environmental immigrants” by 2010. What are the environmental factors on earth to make urban people give up their city life and take the risk of immigration?
Haze leads to new trend of “environmental immigration”
Lin Qinghua, professor of Institute of Geochemistry of Chinese Academy of Science, said, “The reasons for immigration include the factors like politics, nature and family.” Inevasible immigration is caused by natural disasters. Human activities also have become the important factor to induce environmental changes. Professor Lin said, “The direct reasons for environmental immigration include people’s incorrect producing and living methods and ecological environmental deterioration and pollution caused by unwise economic policies and industrial structure in addition to natural disasters.” Looking back at the development of different countries, we can see it is a common phenomenon that they sacrifice the environment for economic interests.
Benita Ferrero Waldner, specialist of EU external policy, and Javier Solana, senior representative of foreign affairs in European Commission, said in their recent report that it was predicted that in ten years there would be “millions of environmental immigrants caused by the main reason of the deterioration of living environment” in the world. Among all the environmental problems, air pollution is the most serious. According to the report of Global Burden of Disease released by a British medical journal of The Lancet, in 2012, 2.1 million Asians died of air pollution. Lin Qinghua, professor of Institute of Geochemistry of Chinese Academy of Science, said, “The most serious problem in the urban development is air pollution, which has become the main reason for people’s immigration since it is closely linked to human health.” A report from Financial Times pointed out that after Beijing made the record of three-month serious air pollution, some companies responsible for foreigners’ residential services were preparing for them to leave Beijing even though there was no specific data about the number of foreigners who would leave Beijing. For example, a doctor from Beijing United Family Hospital which provides services for foreigners said that many patients told the doctors that they would leave because of the unbearable air pollution. According to the statistics of World Health Organization, the concentration of fine particulates in the first-tier cities in China has reached forty times of the recommended exposure limit, which affects directly human’s survival. On November 6, 2013, an eight-year-old girl from Jiangsu Province was diagnosed lung cancer. Feng Dongjie, doctor from Jiangsu Tumor Hospital, said, “This girl is afflicted with cancer because she lives on the side of a road and absorbs dusts for a long time.”
Wu Xiaoqing, vice minister of Ministry of Environmental Protection of the People’s Republic of China, said to the reporter about this problem that extensive development made many people become “environmental immigrants”. He said, in addition to the external factor of unfavorable climate conditions, the fundamental reason is the environmental problem caused by fast industrialization and urbanization. Energy structure of high energy consumption, high emission, serious pollution, excessive production capacity and unreasonable layout continue to intensify. Moreover, vehicles and their pollution emission rapidly increase. The controlling of pollution is also not strong enough. All these reasons lead to frequent hazes. Winters as well as summers become the season of frequent hazes. Wu Xiaoqing thought that the hazy weather was the serious cost of extensive economic development. If we didn’t change the model of economic development, adjust the industrial structure and change the backward producing and living methods, it would be very difficult to reduce hazes and improve air quality.
Zhong Nanshan, deputy to the National People’s Congress and academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, said in the interview, “It is sure that haze has effect on tumor. The rate of lung cancer in Beijing increases by 2.42%.” He added, “If we have problems in eating, drinking and breathing, is there any meaning to be the first in GDP in the world?” He hoped that the government would work hard to improve the environment the same way as to achieve high GDP. Immigration because of ecological crisis
“Environmental immigrants” is not a new word only at present. Since there were human beings, ecological disasters have come along with them. Thus environmental immigrants emerge at the right moment. In ancient times, people urinated and defecated anywhere and they hunted for more and more animals, which led to the environmental deterioration and popular pestilence so that they had to move to new places. What nature returns to human beings is to make “environmental immigrants” move from here to there.
Today, the earth's population has exceeded 5.5 billion. Every year, 100 million people increase on the earth. Ecological crisis like population explosion, environmental pollution, climate anomalies, bad agricultural crops and unequal food distribution cause environmental immigration to boom. Most of these immigrants are from developing countries. They immigrate freely or through the government organizations. For example, Indonesia implemented the plan of “Transmigration” from the densely populated island of Java to other islands in 1969; Ethiopia carried on the implementation of migration plan of 1.2 million people from the ecological fragile northern plateau to the south and west in 1984. Of course, in addition to the organized large-scale migration, there are still a lot of "free" environmental immigrants. But on the whole, the same reason for all these immigrations is the vicious cycle of ecological environment.
According to a report of People’s Daily in 2012, from 2010 to 2011, immigrants caused by extreme ecological disasters in Asia-Pacific regions reached over 42,000,000. In the future, this kind of disaster will be more frequent so that Asia-Pacific countries must take actions immediately, as warned by Asian Development Bank in its report Tackling the Climate Change and Immigration in Asia-Pacific Region.
Natural disasters lead to “environmental immigration”
Relative to political, economic and technical immigration, environmental migration in the future world will attract more and more attention. Simply speaking, environmental migration is caused by environmental destruction, such as hazy weather and increasingly serious ecological crisis. And the primary factor of damage to human living environment is the occurrence of natural disasters. Xu Jiang, professor of Institute of Geochemistry of Chinese Academy of Science, said, "The reason for environmental migration is the destructed living environment. But environmental events because of floods, droughts, mud-rock flows, landslides, earthquakes and climate change which lead to disastrous environment change will cause the massive migration of people." A researcher issued a report on the UN Climate Change Conference held in Bonn in Germany and he said global warming compelled people to leave their homeland, which led to the most massive immigration in history. According to the Associated Press, the research results were different on the prediction of the number of immigrants because of climate changes. Citing the prediction of International Organization for Migration, the new report said that by 2050 200 million people would have to move on because of environmental pressure while some forecasted as high as 700 million would do so.
In a report named Seeking Refuges: Describing the Impacts of Climate Change on Human Migration and Relocation", the researchers studied the residents on the river delta, deserts and islands respectively. Residents in these areas would be influenced by glaciers melt, the increasing drought and rising sea levels, and they may even lose their whole country because of rising sea levels.
The report said that if the sea level rises two meters, 40 islands would disappear totally or partly. In the Indian Ocean, Maldives composed of 1200 coral atolls plans to give up some islands, and construct the fortifications on other islands. Moreover, this country probably will move all its 300,000 people to another country.
Today in the 21st century, climate change may have been the factor that causes massive migration. However, it is difficult to make a forecast on the size of the environmental immigration. "Disasters lead to short-term immigration, especially in those countries with no warning measures and not enough response mechanism toward disasters,” said Charles Ehrhart from CARE International. This report said that most immigration would be limited to domestic areas, from villages to cities.
Again the new “environmental immigrants” place the environment problems of big cities in the center of public opinions.
Environmental immigrants in cities, no matter moving internationally or among different cities, are for the purpose to improve their living environment. But they still worry about the turbulence and immigration as there are many uncertain factors such as whether the new life will be better or whether they will be accepted by the new place. These worries, however, can’t prevent the trend of environmental immigration. According to UN statistics, there will be 50 million “environmental immigrants” by 2010. What are the environmental factors on earth to make urban people give up their city life and take the risk of immigration?
Haze leads to new trend of “environmental immigration”
Lin Qinghua, professor of Institute of Geochemistry of Chinese Academy of Science, said, “The reasons for immigration include the factors like politics, nature and family.” Inevasible immigration is caused by natural disasters. Human activities also have become the important factor to induce environmental changes. Professor Lin said, “The direct reasons for environmental immigration include people’s incorrect producing and living methods and ecological environmental deterioration and pollution caused by unwise economic policies and industrial structure in addition to natural disasters.” Looking back at the development of different countries, we can see it is a common phenomenon that they sacrifice the environment for economic interests.
Benita Ferrero Waldner, specialist of EU external policy, and Javier Solana, senior representative of foreign affairs in European Commission, said in their recent report that it was predicted that in ten years there would be “millions of environmental immigrants caused by the main reason of the deterioration of living environment” in the world. Among all the environmental problems, air pollution is the most serious. According to the report of Global Burden of Disease released by a British medical journal of The Lancet, in 2012, 2.1 million Asians died of air pollution. Lin Qinghua, professor of Institute of Geochemistry of Chinese Academy of Science, said, “The most serious problem in the urban development is air pollution, which has become the main reason for people’s immigration since it is closely linked to human health.” A report from Financial Times pointed out that after Beijing made the record of three-month serious air pollution, some companies responsible for foreigners’ residential services were preparing for them to leave Beijing even though there was no specific data about the number of foreigners who would leave Beijing. For example, a doctor from Beijing United Family Hospital which provides services for foreigners said that many patients told the doctors that they would leave because of the unbearable air pollution. According to the statistics of World Health Organization, the concentration of fine particulates in the first-tier cities in China has reached forty times of the recommended exposure limit, which affects directly human’s survival. On November 6, 2013, an eight-year-old girl from Jiangsu Province was diagnosed lung cancer. Feng Dongjie, doctor from Jiangsu Tumor Hospital, said, “This girl is afflicted with cancer because she lives on the side of a road and absorbs dusts for a long time.”
Wu Xiaoqing, vice minister of Ministry of Environmental Protection of the People’s Republic of China, said to the reporter about this problem that extensive development made many people become “environmental immigrants”. He said, in addition to the external factor of unfavorable climate conditions, the fundamental reason is the environmental problem caused by fast industrialization and urbanization. Energy structure of high energy consumption, high emission, serious pollution, excessive production capacity and unreasonable layout continue to intensify. Moreover, vehicles and their pollution emission rapidly increase. The controlling of pollution is also not strong enough. All these reasons lead to frequent hazes. Winters as well as summers become the season of frequent hazes. Wu Xiaoqing thought that the hazy weather was the serious cost of extensive economic development. If we didn’t change the model of economic development, adjust the industrial structure and change the backward producing and living methods, it would be very difficult to reduce hazes and improve air quality.
Zhong Nanshan, deputy to the National People’s Congress and academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, said in the interview, “It is sure that haze has effect on tumor. The rate of lung cancer in Beijing increases by 2.42%.” He added, “If we have problems in eating, drinking and breathing, is there any meaning to be the first in GDP in the world?” He hoped that the government would work hard to improve the environment the same way as to achieve high GDP. Immigration because of ecological crisis
“Environmental immigrants” is not a new word only at present. Since there were human beings, ecological disasters have come along with them. Thus environmental immigrants emerge at the right moment. In ancient times, people urinated and defecated anywhere and they hunted for more and more animals, which led to the environmental deterioration and popular pestilence so that they had to move to new places. What nature returns to human beings is to make “environmental immigrants” move from here to there.
Today, the earth's population has exceeded 5.5 billion. Every year, 100 million people increase on the earth. Ecological crisis like population explosion, environmental pollution, climate anomalies, bad agricultural crops and unequal food distribution cause environmental immigration to boom. Most of these immigrants are from developing countries. They immigrate freely or through the government organizations. For example, Indonesia implemented the plan of “Transmigration” from the densely populated island of Java to other islands in 1969; Ethiopia carried on the implementation of migration plan of 1.2 million people from the ecological fragile northern plateau to the south and west in 1984. Of course, in addition to the organized large-scale migration, there are still a lot of "free" environmental immigrants. But on the whole, the same reason for all these immigrations is the vicious cycle of ecological environment.
According to a report of People’s Daily in 2012, from 2010 to 2011, immigrants caused by extreme ecological disasters in Asia-Pacific regions reached over 42,000,000. In the future, this kind of disaster will be more frequent so that Asia-Pacific countries must take actions immediately, as warned by Asian Development Bank in its report Tackling the Climate Change and Immigration in Asia-Pacific Region.
Natural disasters lead to “environmental immigration”
Relative to political, economic and technical immigration, environmental migration in the future world will attract more and more attention. Simply speaking, environmental migration is caused by environmental destruction, such as hazy weather and increasingly serious ecological crisis. And the primary factor of damage to human living environment is the occurrence of natural disasters. Xu Jiang, professor of Institute of Geochemistry of Chinese Academy of Science, said, "The reason for environmental migration is the destructed living environment. But environmental events because of floods, droughts, mud-rock flows, landslides, earthquakes and climate change which lead to disastrous environment change will cause the massive migration of people." A researcher issued a report on the UN Climate Change Conference held in Bonn in Germany and he said global warming compelled people to leave their homeland, which led to the most massive immigration in history. According to the Associated Press, the research results were different on the prediction of the number of immigrants because of climate changes. Citing the prediction of International Organization for Migration, the new report said that by 2050 200 million people would have to move on because of environmental pressure while some forecasted as high as 700 million would do so.
In a report named Seeking Refuges: Describing the Impacts of Climate Change on Human Migration and Relocation", the researchers studied the residents on the river delta, deserts and islands respectively. Residents in these areas would be influenced by glaciers melt, the increasing drought and rising sea levels, and they may even lose their whole country because of rising sea levels.
The report said that if the sea level rises two meters, 40 islands would disappear totally or partly. In the Indian Ocean, Maldives composed of 1200 coral atolls plans to give up some islands, and construct the fortifications on other islands. Moreover, this country probably will move all its 300,000 people to another country.
Today in the 21st century, climate change may have been the factor that causes massive migration. However, it is difficult to make a forecast on the size of the environmental immigration. "Disasters lead to short-term immigration, especially in those countries with no warning measures and not enough response mechanism toward disasters,” said Charles Ehrhart from CARE International. This report said that most immigration would be limited to domestic areas, from villages to cities.