Environmental Degradation and Migration from Bangladesh to India

Research Paper from the year 2013 in the subject Politics - International Politics - Region: Far East, , course: M.Phil, language: English, abstract: In the era of globalisation, where opening of borders is being advocated all over the world, there is one issue over which no nation-state is ready to compromise with its territorial borders. The issue of migration and refugees is considered so sensitive that states have often linked it with their sovereignty, independence and even existence. Environmental degradation has become a crucial issue in the contemporary world. The effects of climate change are likely to trigger mass human movement both within and across international borders. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees ( UNHCR ) predicts that between 50 and 200 million people may be displaced by 2050. Thus, the human impact on the environment is creating a new kind of global casualty for the twenty-first century an emergent class of environmental migrants. Environmental crisis in the rural areas of developing countries is increasingly becoming an important cause of cross-border migration of population and South Asia is no exception to this phenomenon. Such movement of population in the Indo-Bangladesh context is generating a range of destabilising socio-political, economic, ethnic and communal tensions in India. It has embittered Indo-Bangladesh relations, causing tensions between the two countries.§.