Wandering souls & disappearing forests - lack of trees force people to flee to more livable environments - includes related article - World Forests

American Forests, May-June, 1992 by Ted Field

It's tough to write about refugees. It's tough--not because of the vacant eyes and distended bellies and withered limbs, or even because of grief-stricken mothers trying to suckle the corpses of their babies--but because of a quirk of the English language. Although "refugee" is derived from "refuge," it sounds a lot like "refuse."

Sadly, the word "refuse" defines the plight of refugees--they are considered "throw-away people." Tossed aside by events and by people more powerful, they lose everything, including their dignity. It is tough to write about a mass of millions upon millions of such people.

It's also tough to write about refugees and trees. The two seem almost mutually exclusive. Refugees reflect everything that is wrong about the world--a loss of dignity and vitality. Trees symbolize the opposite--strength and life. Mixing the two is like mixing oil and water.

But it's important to write about refugees in terms of forests and trees because many refugees need trees to survive, and many are refugees because of a lack of trees. Trees are also becoming a principal means for providing refugee rehabilitation. The good that comes from trees is clearly evident in refugee populations that either flee treeless environments or deforest an area because of their numbers.

WHAT IS A REFUGEE?

Refugees are people who migrate when conditions make human life impossible or intolerable. Refugees leave their homes for political, economic, or environmental reasons. According to accepted international definitions, however, environmental and economic factors (aside from natural disasters, that is) are not considered reasons for seeking refuge.

The United Nations defines a refugee as a person who migrates "owing to a well-founded fear of persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality, and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country..." Therefore, to be an "official refugee,"a person needs to cross an internationally recognized border because of a fear of political persecution at home.

In July 1991, the United Nations High Commission on Refugees (UNHCR) estimated that there are more than 16 million "official" refugees worldwide. The majority live in Asia and Africa. Given the official definition, it should come as no surprise that over six million Afghans, 2.4 million Palestinians, and 1.4 million Mozambicans have fled or been forced from their homelands. But how many others have left their homes because of collapsed economies or disintegrating environments, without crossing an internationally recognized border? No one really knows, although the World Bank estimates that an additional 17 to 20 million people could be considered refugees. No one knows how many people have moved because this year's crop yield is less than the last's, or because the four-hour walk for water simply becomes too much, or because being a maid or a houseboy is a little better than life on some treeless plain.

It's impossible to write the individual stories of 36 million people. All too often, refugees are thought of as whole groups of people. Refugees may come in groups, but these groups have names. They are Afghans, Chewas, Tamils, Brazilians, Kampucheans, Haitians, Guatemalans, Somalians, Oromos, Salvadoreans, and hundreds more.

In telling the story of refugees and trees, we tell the story of whole populations. In rural sub-Saharan Africa, for example, an influx of 100,000 refugees will desertify 360 hectares (about 900 acres). They will consume 75,000 metric tons of fuel wood annually (that figure does not include trees used for shelter or other purposes). It's not unusual to see vast areas of denuded land around refugee camps. If refugees congregate in one place, their sheer numbers turn a political event into environmental disaster.

The relationship between refugees and the environment is different in different parts of the world. However, there are similarities: Refugees usually represent the poorest of the poor. The rich may migrate; the poor flee for their lives. Most poor refugee populations are found in arid and semi-arid regions, where the relationship between humans and the environment is already tenuous. Refugee populations tend to be skewed toward the old, the young, and the female.

The environment works on refugees in different ways. In Malawi, for example, the environment is destroyed first because of a man-made event: war. In Brazil, Haiti, and Mauritania, people are made refugees partly because of the environment, and partly because of human actions. Whatever the original reasons, refugees are in a battle with the environment, and only when they make peace with and embrace it will they "conquer" it.

MAURITANIA

Mauritania, in northern Africa, is famous as the country that is blowing away. The capital Nouakchott, clings to a barren coast and is filled with former nomads. In Nouakchott, people spend their time clearing yesterday's sandstorm from water wells, digging homes out from under shifting dunes, and waiting for the next foreign-aid shipment.