Description
Summary : Scientists agree that environmental change is contributing to a significant increase in human migration. Among the most affected regions are Latin America and the Caribbean, which have experienced sea level rise, droughts and rapid-onset natural hazards such as heavy rains, floods and hurricanes. Desertification in Mexico and glacial melt in South America are further degrading rural livelihoods and water availability. In Central America, at least 3.5 million people are in need of humanitarian aid because of failed harvests and acute food and water shortages, as the region suffers its worst drought in over a decade.
The Center for Latin American and Latino Studies (CLALS) at American University proposes a program of research, publication and engagement with stakeholders dedicated to understanding the relationship between religion and environmental displacement. The project builds on work supported by previous HRLI grants that focused on the participation of religious actors, institutions and networks in debates on environmental rights and justice.
The research seeks to better understand religions’ role at each phase of environmental migration: from departure or displacement, through the journey, to arrival and adaptation. It will examine how different religious traditions (Christian, indigenous and Afro-Latino) inform individual and community responses to environmental dislocations. It will also explore the potential of religious voices and ideas to bring public attention to legal challenges faced by environmental migrants, as “climate refugee” is a term with no international legal standing. The aim is to better understand how religious perspectives and advocacy might conflict with, complement, or enhance secular humanitarian responses or international and state-based approaches to recognizing and protecting environmental migrants.
Religious engagement will be studied at several levels: governance, humanitarianism, and religion as a resource. Faith-based actors, for example, have participated in UN and regional consultative processes addressing the status of environmental migrants. To what extent, the proposal asks, “are different theologies of migration in dialogue with political, policy and legal formulations…and how persuasive have religious voices been with secular counterparts?” In addressing humanitarianism, the project will examine concepts such as sanctuary, derived from theological ethics and put into practice in a growing number of churches and cities.
Finally, religion may help communities deal with uncertainty associated with displacement, including non-economic loss: loss of biodiversity, territory, knowledge, social cohesion, heritage and identity. The San Blas Kuna, for example, are planning to relocate from islands off Panama to the mainland, as their archipelago will disappear within in a generation under rising seas. Some 50,000 Kuna will lose not only their land but also their connections to religious and cultural sites. The project will address Catholic and Evangelical responses, as well as “how minority and indigenous religious traditions are being transformed by, and responding to, the challenges of climate-induced displacement.”
The project will organize three workshops: in Brazil, which has a growing number of environmental migrants and has taken steps to recognize them; in Mexico, a major migrant transit and receiving country; and in Washington, DC, where the focus will be on religious engagement in cases of planned relocation, and the resettlement and integration of migrants in receiving communities.
At least one edited scholarly volume will be published, along with two CLALS working papers aimed at policy audiences. CLALS also plans to collaborate with the Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting to produce three student documentary videos. In addition to these tangible outcomes, the project will strengthen regional networks of researchers working at the intersection of climate change and migration.
Eric Hershberg, Director of CLALS, will serve as the PI, working with a core team including Evan Berry, an associate professor of philosophy and religion, and Robert Albro, an anthropologist who studies natural resource conflicts and social movements in the Andes.
CLALS was established in 2010 to promote research and to connect its work to public debate and policy innovation. It has launched over two dozen initiatives supported by university resources as well as by more than 25 external grants totaling over $3 million from foundations.
