Environmental Changes and the Competing Perspectives on Environmentally Displaced Persons

Abstract

This chapter introduces the case and thus presents a concise background of the academic approaches to the topics of environmental changes and disaster displacement. Under environmental changes, this thesis sums up both climate change-related changes, natural disasters that are non-related to climate change and environmental destruction that is non-related to climate change. In this context, the chapter outlines some of the leading security theories that serve as a background for many of the scholarly approaches to the topic. In doing so, it shows the development from a strictly environmental conflict debate up to the early 2000s toward the current—more nuanced—debate on climate change, natural disasters and the accompanying human implications. In this way, the chapter outlines the security connotations with regard to environmental migration and displacement, and it presents a background on environmentally displaced persons. Overall, this chapter lays the groundwork for the analysis.