Short answers, pulled from the story.
Lester Brown first proposed the term environmental refugee in 1976 to describe people forced from their homes by ecological changes. Essam El-Hinnawi of the United Nations Environment Programme offered a stricter definition involving marked environmental disruption that jeopardized existence or seriously affected quality of life by 1985.
The International Organization for Migration distinguishes three primary types of environmental migration based on speed and nature of triggers. Environmental emergency migrants flee temporarily due to sudden disasters like tsunamis or hurricanes, while environmental forced migrants must leave because of slow deterioration such as deforestation or coastal erosion. Environmental motivated migrants choose to leave to avoid future problems like declining crop productivity caused by desertification.
Jodi Jacobson became the first researcher to calculate total numbers of environmental migrants in 1988 stating there were already up to 10 million refugees. She argued all forms of environmental refugees would be six times as numerous as political refugees under worst-case scenarios. By 1989 Mustafa Tolba proposed that the number could exceed 50 million people if sustainable development efforts failed.
Over 65 million people spread across 39 Small Island Developing States live highly vulnerable to social and environmental changes as of 2020. Islands like Kiribati Vanuatu and Fiji face immediate danger from rising sea levels threatening habitability. As of 2020 an estimated 11.5 million individuals originating from these states lived outside their country of birth.
Environmental racism refers to systemic exposure of racialized and Indigenous populations to environmental hazards and exclusion from decision-making about land use. Oil extraction in the Niger Delta has led to severe pollution and displacement of local communities who are often Indigenous or Black. Women particularly Indigenous and Black women experience compounded exposure due to roles in caregiving and food production.