Arising Potential Conflict: Environmental Threats and Forced

Migration in Pacific Island States

Togu Alexander, Aditya Pratama and Naifa Rizani

Parahyangan Catholic University

Keywords: Environmental Security, Forced Migration, Conflict, Small Island Developing States, Pacific Island States

Abstract: Environmental Security in Pacific Island countries has been the prominent concern as it adversely impacts

the livelihood of people. Threats such as natural disaster, environmental degradation, and climate change

contribute to deprivation of human needs. Due to inability of inhabitant for securing their needs caused by

environmental issues, they look for prospective place purposively maintain their life which triggered forced

migration in massive scale. With the increasing number of population growth each year, forced migration is

an emerging issue that could escalate to a potential conflict. Through this paper, we examine deprivation of

needs for living caused by environmental threats in Pacific Island countries which triggers high rate of

forced migration. Thus, it will create a possibility of conflict between migrant and native in recipient

countries. These chain of events and the potential threat of conflict will be examined using the concept of

Protracted Social Conflict proposed by Edward Azar. This paper explores forced migration and its

repercussion due to the environmental threats. Vulnerability of Pacific island countries in climate change

could not be ignored. The unpredictable nature of climate change and natural disasters produce a situation in

which there needs to be more studies in how it affects forced migration and conflicts.

1 INTRODUCTION

Pacific Island countries located in distinctive marine

environment, separating people by its ocean yet still

bring significance of the Pacific peoples. Ever since

1990, the region has face range of environmental

problems that gradually creates damage and harming

the well-being of the Pacific island people. Pacific

Island countries have been exposing difficulties to

grow their economic and development.

Living as archipelago states, climate change and

sea level rise are environmental conditions that

Pacific Island facing every day. Climate change pose

a major threat to natural hazards such as tropical

cyclones (hurricanes), associated storm surge,

droughts, tsunamis, and volcanic eruptions.People in

Pacific island are unable to manage the resources

that they have due to vulnerability of their land

towards natural disasters. They become difficult to

maintain their basic needs as natural disaster keeps

damaging their resources.

Through environmental changes, it influences the

demographic, economic, social and cultural factor

that encourages people to migrate. There are three

possibilities that support the impact of

environmental changes to migration. First, the

climate change may threaten the land security of

some Pacific island communities that allows them to

lose their settlement or supporting habitation.

Second, human security may be affected by the

climate change as people lose their subsistence

livelihoods such as food, health, and their well-

being. Third, even though the settlement can be

physically secure, it still cannot ensure that the

livelihoods is sustainable. There is still possibility

where the environment could harm the people in the

future. For example, there may be changing of

disease vectors, loss of water supply in quality and

quantity, and increasing the possibility of future

natural threats. Pacific island people whose having

growing economics and development, have been

threaten by the impacts of these environmental

changes, distress them with the damages that cost

their resources. These events push them to migrate

to another bigger Pacific Island Countries just to

gain better livelihoods.

Migration of Pacific island people come with the

purpose of attaining their basic needs that destroyed

by natural disaster and land vulnerability. They

migrate in the state of deprivation of needs and

different environment that they may go through will

change the social conditions on those designated

countries. Through this, the topic will analyze the

Alexander, T., Pratama, A. and Rizani, N.

Arising Potential Conﬂict: Environmental Threats and Forced Migration in Paciﬁc Island States.

DOI: 10.5220/0010277600002309

In Proceedings of Airlangga Conference on International Relations (ACIR 2018) - Politics, Economy, and Security in Changing Indo-Paciﬁc Region, pages 387-390

ISBN: 978-989-758-493-0

387

possibility of conflict occurring through the

migration of Pacific Island countries caused by

Environmental threats. By using Protracted Social

Conflict (PSC) as the base on analyzing the potential

conflict, literature review, and mobility data of

migration from Pacific island we can find how the

forced migration caused by environmental threats

can stimulate social conflict to be spread.

2 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

Protracted Social Conflict (PSC) emphasizes that the

cause of conflict lies mainly within and across a

state instead of exclusively between states.

(Ramsbotham, 2005) Edward Azar elaborates four

variables which are the preconditions PSC’s gradual

escalation in a high intensity conflict. These four

preconditions are; communal content, needs,

governance, and international linkage.

The frequently used unit of analysis in protracted

social conflicts is identity group. This includes

racial, ethnic, religious, and cultural groups among

others.

(Azar,1990) PSC focuses on the analysis of

identity groups, or rather the relationship between

said identity groups and the state, as the core of the

problem. Azar calls this the “disarticulation between

the state and the society as a whole”. (Azar, 1990)

PSC also focuses on individual interests and needs

which are mediated through the membership of

social groups.

(Azar, 1985)

Azar then also identified the deprivation of

personal needs as the cause of protracted social

conflict. In his word, “Grievances resulting from

need deprivation are usually expressed collectively.

Failure to address these grievances by the authority

cultivates a niche for a protracted social conflict.”).

(Azar, 1990) Needs are quite similar but different

from interests, in which needs are non-negotiable

and conflicts that are born from deprivation or needs

are likely to be intense, vicious, and irrational.

(Ramsbotham, 2005)

Third, governance and state’s role is the critical

factor in the satisfaction or frustration of individual

and identity group needs. Azar stated, “Most states

which experience protracted social conﬂict tend to

be characterized by incompetent, parochial, fragile,

and authoritarian governments that fail to satisfy

basic human needs”.

(Azar,1990) Azar notes how

PSCs tend to happen in developing countries that

have restricted political capacity and rapid

population growth with limited resources.

(Ramsbotham, 2005)

Finally, the role of what Azar calls “international

linkages”, which is the political-economy relations

between states, in particular economic dependency

within the international economic system and the

network of political-military linkages. Azar stated

“formation of domestic social and political

institutions and their impact on the role of the state

are greatly inﬂuenced by the patterns of linkage

within the international system”. (Azar,1990)

3 LITERATURE REVIEW

The issue of forced mass mobilization and its impact

have created discourses in literature. An example

would be a journal written by Jillian Ash and Jillian

Campbell titled “Climate Change and Migration:

The Case of the Pacific Islands and Australia”, that

focuses more on migration. While not focusing on

forced mobilization this journal also underlines that

even voluntary migration may also be caused by

climate change due to it affecting human security,

livelihood, land security, and natural resources.

However the case in the Pacific is delicate in that

due to many states are atoll nations, internal

migration would be difficult and in the end lack of

planning to anticipate the rising mobilization across

the pacific Islands humanitarian crises may occur.

One of the statement that is quite interesting

however is that the journal stated public opinion has

an important role and a critical factor in successful

resettlement of migrants. (Ash et al,2016)

Another Journal by Diane C. Bates classify

further on the term “Environmental Refugees”,

stating that migration streams resulting from

environmental disruptions can be categorized based

on the three categories of disruptions, disasters,

expropriations, and deterioration. Disaster refugees

originate in acute events that are not designed to

trigger migration, whether it is caused by natural

events or technological accidents. Expropriation

refugees involve permanent displacement of people

whose habitat is appropriated for land use

incompatible with their continued residence. Finally

deterioration refugees come from ecosystem that has

degraded to a point where people cannot survive

anymore from local resources. Thus, the Haiti case

study from Myers journal is an example of forced

mobilization due to deterioration and the focus of

this essay, forced mobilization in the pacific island

states, is a forced mobilization due to disasters.

(Bates, 2002)

While both these journals tackle the issue

of environmental refugees differently, it is important

ACIR 2018 - Airlangga Conference on International Relations

388

to know that these journals highlight how

environmental refugees occur and it has impact on

the destination countries. This essay may lean more

on Jilian Ash and Jillian Campbell’s essay due to

how it being the closest to exploring the issue this

paper aims to explain, but Diane’s classification of

environmental refugees may also be valuable.

4 DISCUSSION

The Pacific Island may be considered as small

contributor towards climate change. Yet, ironically,

the Pacific Islands are one of the regions that have

major loss regarding the impact of climate change.

Environmental changes impacted the economic

cycle in Pacific Island. Climate changes and natural

disaster considered as environmental threats due to

Pacific Islands Countries’ susceptibility over it.

There is a common economical assumption that

stated any increase of economy growth will harm

environmental quality or the opposite. Such

assumption could jeopardize role of economic

growth in enhancing environmental quality and will

put stakeholder in dilemma since it’s not a take-it-

or-leave-it decision. Both of sectors shall be

embraced.

The concept of environmental Kuznet has shown

that relations between economic growth and

environmental enhancement are not entirely an

animosity. (Tisdell, 2008). Economic growth could

bring significant changes to tackle climate changes.

Since economic growth brings enhancement of

capacity, they could enhance capacity to repress any

climate change causes.

Chains of economic activity also could be

threatened through natural disaster and climate

changes. Direct damages could be happened if

environmental threats hit fixed asset such as building

and infrastructure; raw material and resources.

Indirect damages will take place if natural disaster

and climate changes hit Gross Domestic Product

(GDP), opportunity cost, consumption and

investment. (Noy, 2016), thus it will hamper Pacific

Islands’ inhabitants to achieve their needs, to some

extent the inhabitants will suffer from deprivation of

needs as human securities could not be secured.

In the 1994, United Nations Development

Programme (UNDP) issued a concept namely

human security. Its concept of security is people

centered, where people could live upon their

freedom. In the case of Pacific Island, if

environmental threats keep inhabitants away from

the human security, then it will let them deprive

from needs. People shall be secured upon freedom to

fulfill their needs of food, community, health, and so

forth. However, environmental threats in Pacific

Island jeopardize Pacific island inhabitant freedom

to fulfill their needs. Susceptibility to threats is the

main cause.

A total 850,000 people from Pacific countries

were living in four big Pacific migrant destinations;

New Zealand (350,000), Australia (150,000), USA

(300,000) and Canada (50,000) by 2010. These

number came significantly from Small Island such

as Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Tokelau and Tuvalu,

alongside with scattered atolls and reef islands in the

region. These countries known as the ‘drowning

island’ and the people came from low-lyling

communities. So as they are struggle to obtain

resettlement in foreign countries, the entire

community will be challenged with different

customary owners as they also already feeling severe

by environmental and social stress. Climate Change

will add pressure onresidents to move elsewhere.

4.1 Pacific Island Countries and

Protracted Social Conflict

Edward Azar on his theory of Protracted Social

Conflict elaborates four preconditions that may

invoke PSC and gradually escalating it into a high

intensity conflict. As such the Pacific Island States

shall also be examined using these four

preconditions to find out the potential of PSC.

Firstly, is there any possible disarticulation

between the state and the society as a whole? As

stated beforehand, there are assumptions on how

economic enhancement will also bring

environmental degradation. The existence of this

assumption proves that there is already

disarticulation between the people of Pacific Islands

and those who are in charge of the economy. Pacific

Islands States receives major losses due to climate

change while they are not industrialized. Simply put,

they are paying the price for others’ progress.

And then there is the issue of deprivation of

needs. It has been established that the Pacific Island

States are both dependent on nature and vulnerable

to natural disasters. Climate change enhances the

vulnerability of these small states even further and

their dependency towards nature threatened as a

result. As such, without further policies designed to

end this vulnerability or to find a way out of their

dependency, it may lead the people of Pacific Island

States to demand the fulfillment of their needs thus

sowing seeds of conflict.

Arising Potential Conﬂict: Environmental Threats and Forced Migration in Paciﬁc Island States

389

Thirdly, Edward Azar stated that PSC tend to

happen in a developing state. This is mainly due to

lack of resources and rapid population growth.

Pacific Island States inhabitants lives in coastal areas

and are dependent on natural resources. The

degradation of environment may lead to the lack of

resources thus making it harder for them to fulfill

their needs, destabilizing the state and may allow

further conflict.

Finally, there is the final precondition,

international linkages. A case study on this

precondition has been done on the journal by Ash

and Campbell which focuses on how natural

disasters in Pacific Island States led the inhabitants

to migrate towards Australia due to the difficulty of

internal migration. As such, conflict may occur if the

linkage between developed states, especially in this

case Australia, and the Pacific Island States are

severed or damaged.

5 CONCLUSION

We’ve seen how susceptibility of Pacific Island

Countries upon environmental threats could harm

stability in Pacific Region. The Environmental

threats may be perceived as growing threats as

migration from Pacific Island Countries could harm

other countries security. There will be needed for

further research to create more awareness upon this

issue. We hope this paper could be a source to create

prevention policy for any related stakeholder.

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