Nexus dynamics: the impact of environmental vulnerabilities and climate change on refugee camps

Climate change and forced migration are often thought about in terms of the sheer numbers of people who might be displaced by a transforming environment. But the potential for ‘environmental refugees’ – whether from long-term degradation or short-term catastrophe—extends far beyond those directly affected. Understanding the forces that produce, respond to and amplify such forced migration patterns requires a complex and nuanced view of them. In this article, I explore the question of environmental displacement through the lens of nexus dynamics and look at how environmental refugees complicate our understandings of place, belonging, stability and resilience. I do so through a focus on the largest global refugee camps in the world and the particular environmental vulnerabilities that each faces. Using Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh (Rohingya refugees), Dadaab in Kenya (Somali refugees) and Za’atari in Jordan (Syrian refugees), I examine the ways that political, economic and ecological factors have driven the inhabitants to the camps, keep them vulnerable within them, and raise questions about both their and the camps’ respective futures. By cataloguing some of the environmental risks within the region of each camp and examining each camp’s response in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, I consider the broader logic, viability and purpose of each of these camps, as representative of parallel spaces globally. What does resilience and vulnerability mean in a refugee camp? How does a nexus dynamics approach to climate change and migration help us to understand a complex system such as this?