Environmental Change and Human Migration

The 30th anniversary of the journal Migration and Ethnic Themes (MET) is an occasion to announce a new key issue in the modern world's future, which, in the authors' opinion, is becoming the central theme within multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary field of migration studies. This concerns the displacement of people in the local and national context as well as migration across national borders, at the regional and global level, which are directly or indirectly caused by environmental change. The authors accept the classification on the causal categories of 'environmental migration' as: a) 'natural' disasters; b) 'urban-industrial' disasters, and c) exploitation and degradation of resources. Finally, the authors systematize two major competing approaches to migration and migrants caused by environmental change. However, neither they nor anyone else (unfortunately) can convincingly deny that a single cataclysmic natural disaster may cause destruction of humanity, and conversion of large parts of our planet into a desolate area. If our civilization is doomed, environmental factors, by all odds, will be among its gravediggers. Adapted from the source document.