Contenu du sommaire : Réfugiés climatiques, migrants environnementaux ou déplacés ?

From Safeguarding the Earth to the Protection of Climate Refugees: the Activism of NGOs. The idea of environmental protection emerged thanks to the activism of NGOs, supported by international institutions. Although international conferences have not lived up to the hopes of many NGOs, they continue to mobilize international public opinion with regard to sustainable development and climate change. They have developed a real capacity for attracting the media and putting on pressure by lobbying in the international arena. In particular, at the Copenhagen Conference (December 2009), NGOs showed great wisdom in placing the spotlight on climate refugees. After a historical perspective on the activism of NGOs on the international level, the aim of this article is to analyse the strategies that NGOs adopt to both dramatise the danger that threatens the planet and emphasize the issues that link humanitarian and environmental sectors.

Emergence and Feasibility of Protection Systems for “Environmental Refugees” at Issue. The question of the definition and protection of environmental refugees and climate refugees is becoming more and more widespread in reports and publications from both UN agencies and organizations, experts, researchers and academics, as well as in NGO literature. The “qualification” of these movements of population varies between persons or organizations who are involved in this topic. Today, no legal instruments define or provide direct protection that is comprehensible and relevant to all environmental refugees: they remain to be created. Our contribution will therefore analyze the main prospective avenues currently being discussed in the academic and political worlds, and by associations and experts. The degree of realism, relevance and feasibility of these legal avenues will be put at issue.

Climate Migrants and Asylum for Refugees in France and in Europe. Today, the term “climate refugee” is widely promoted in the media and is also the result of a consensus of opinion, while the main issues addressed by this term include “how can we protect these emigrants” and “how can we be protected from these immigrants”. On the one hand, some people use the term in order to try to protect climate migrants by offering them a status inspired by the Geneva Convention refugee status. However they forget that refugee status is not constraining for States. The status was created to allow States to control migrations linked to asylum. It means that the right of asylum is not a right to asylum. And on the other hand, other people view the term “climate refugee” as an opportunity to depoliticize the concept of refugee and to circulate the idea that all refugees should be protected in their own country or close by. Closing off the European borders to refugees would then be justified.

Is Global Warming the Root Cause of the Darfur Crisis? Scientific Research at the Risk of denying Complexity. The Darfur crisis is admittedly the result of a growing discrepancy between population and resources which has led to heightening tension between tribal groups over access to land and water. The degradation of the environment has been observed for over half a century, due to a large extent to the lack of rural development efforts. The crisis that erupted in 2003 is therefore the outcome of a revolt of the population against the neglect and exploitation of Darfur by the Nile riverine elites. However, the flight of the villagers who escaped massacre by the army and its janjaweed militias only aimed at ensuring their immediate survival. The displaced persons camps do not provide any possibility of continuing agro-pastoralist activities. The alternation of climate cycles does indeed show a tendency toward the diminution of rains. But this has occurred several times in the past, and nothing allows it to be linked at this stage with global warming. The emergency displacements of population occurring during peak food crises as in 1984-85 or during war operations as in 2003-4, can therefore rather be attributed to the economic and social stagnation of which this region has been the victim.

Tuvalu, a Laboratory for Climate Change? An Empirical Critique of the “Canaries in the Coalmine” Rhetoric. The small archipelago of Tuvalu, in the South-Pacific Ocean, is often portrayed as an Atlantis in the making, a symbol of future climate change impacts. This article aims at contrasting this Western perception with the perception of Tuvalu's inhabitants, as well as of those who have migrated to New Zealand. The article highlights the risks of the ‘canaries in the coalmine' rhetoric for local processes of adaptation to climate change, both in Tuvalu and in small island states at large.

The Surprising Diversity of Hombori's Water Resources: Between Environmental Contrasts, Local Practices and Outside Technologies. This paper proposes to highlight the diversity of water resources in a sahelian community with the help of social and environmental indicators. This diversity is based on the coexistence of endogenous resources and exogenous resources. All of these resources are essential to satisfy population needs all year round. Nevertheless, manual pumps impose management methods which disrupt local organization rules for access to water and can lead users to give up these resources. Finally, we demonstrate that beyond any technological determinism, modern/exogenous resources are not likely to replace all of the others.

Resistance to Good Governance in an African State, the Case of the DRC. Good Governance is at the heart of new policies in development. Yet, especially in fragile States, it comes up against strong resistance. Corruption cannot be confined to a single bad governance issue. Both elementary forms of corruption and the most sophisticated ones involving huge amounts of money, are deeply rooted in the production/distribution process established since the 1960s. Predation can take on violent aspects in areas of conflict. It has converted the DRC State to an informal social and political system with regard to the way in which it delivers public goods. The fight for new institutions now on the agenda is hard, due to extreme social habits. To succeed, a true and sustainable change in political and economic management is needed.

The Concepts of Development in Turkey. This article is based on a field survey on “the idea of development in Turkey” carried out between 2008 and 2010. It shows that the internal categories of collected speech are structured around two opposite entrances, and that their line of fracture is located precisely at the crossing between economic and non-economic fields. In other words, a taxonomy of concepts expressed in the form of two large perpendicular axes can be conceived, one corresponding to the field of economics, quantifiable, measurable (neoliberal ideas, moderate muslim and leftist), the other to the cultural, qualitative of non-measurable fields (Kemalist and Muslim radical conceptions).

Solidarity as Seen by the Social Economy. Since the 1990s, we have seen a renewal of words dedicated to development. Among these words, we can single out “solidarity”, and especially “social economy”. This terminology is used in all academic, institutional and political speeches, not only by militant movements and left-wing intellectuals but also, paradoxically, by international financial institutions. This is surprising, insofar as words are the expression of the way in which development issues and, therefore, the priorities and policies to be carried out in the countries concerned, are defined. This article suggests taking a fresh look at the term of “solidarity” and at the ways it is currently used in economics, in order to reveal what lies behind this term. Particular attention will be paid to the “social economy”, a term which brings together a number of researchers who support, a theoretical and political project based on an economic alternative.