But the term "environmental refugee" was popularised later, in 1985, by Essam El-Hinnawi of the National Research Centre, Cairo. His 40-page booklet "Environmental Refugees"was a landmark paper in that direction.

In 1993, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), through "State of the World’s Refugees", identified four causes of refugee flows: political instability, economic tensions, ethnic conflict and finally including "environmental degradation".

Today, natural disasters, development, resource abuse, and degradation are forcing millions and millions of people from their homes.

How it all began
However, environmental refugees are not a recent phenomenon. Right from the beginning of human history, people have had to leave their land because it had been degraded and could not sustain them. Natural disasters have been taking place right from the very beginning and later man-made phenomenon like wars also led to the degradation of the environment.

Millions and millions today
Environmental refugees are emerging as a significant proportion of the world’s displaced. Ecologist Norman Myers of the Oxford University estimates that currently 25 million people worldwide have been uprooted for environmental causes, exceeding the 22 million refugees from civil war and persecution.

Indigenous groups suffer the most
These refugees also face persecution due to the hegemonic discrimination embedded in world culture. This is found throughout examples of environmental refugees, almost all of who are indigenous peoples.

Victims All In 1985, Egyptian Al-Hinnawi of the National Research Centre, Cairo, put environmental refugees into the following three categories: Category 1: People temporarily displaced due to environmental stress. For example: Natural disasters (earthquakes, volcanoes, massive storms, environmental mishaps (like Chernobyl). Damage: Is severe, but the land and people’s lives can usually be re-established after clean-up and rebuilding. Category 2: People permanently displaced and resettled in another area. For example: Permanent changes (dams), natural disasters that permanently damage an area (volcanoes). Category 3: People who can no longer be supported by their lands because of environmental degradation. For example: Massive changes in the environment that render it practically obsolete for human survival, often due to human actions (deforestation and desertification).

These groups have often been moved, without reparation or voice in the system.

The more affluent and powerful have the resources necessary to relocate if the land degrades beyond repair, leaving the subsistence groups homeless and hungry.

Environmental damage due to migration
Environmental degradation occurs in one place and the displaced usually move to a new environment, which is also degraded. Mass migration frequently causes heavy damage on a similar scale. The fleeing people arrive at a new place virtually empty-handed and immediately storm into "free" and "unpatrolled" natural resources. Their temporary stay makes them also develop a short-term attitude towards their new surroundings and their desperate measures exploit whatever is available.

That is why some countries forbid refugees from using water and natural resources around them, preferring to give them a fixed quota of such essentials.

Future Shock
While people have fled in large numbers for environmental reasons in the past, the present condition of the world is altogether different. Environmental degradation is occurring so rapidly that forests will soon disappear, topsoil will quickly be eroded, water resources will dry up, and land shortages and overuse will be exacerbated by unsustainable population growth in just a few years. The number of environmental refugees looks to rise rapidly.

Narmada >> The Government wanted to build a series of dams in Narmada Valley in Gujarat, much to the dismay of detractors who say the move could devastate the river. Activists claim that the completed Narmada project would displace more than 1 million people.
<< Sahel Region One of the biggest catastrophes inAfrica in the seventies, a drought turned the best cropland in five countries into cracked and barren earth. In fact, the term environmental refugees came into popular vocabulary after this. Many had to flee their homelands as agriculture was no longer possible.
Aral Sea>> Around the Aral Sea, thousands of people have had to leave their homes as the toxic waters have killed off the fishing industry. The shipping industry and all related activities have collapsed. Rising concentration of salt in the soil has caused low crop yields. Numerous studies have been conducted with no solutions. In fact locals joke that if everyone who’d come to study the Aral had brought a bucket of water, the sea would be full by now.
<<Three Gorges Dam Billed as the biggest development project in the world, it is potentially one of the biggest displacers. By the time it’s completed, upto 1.9 million Chinese would have been uprooted from their homes.