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Left: Hmmm. Did refugees escaping war cause this environmental destruction or was it a transnational mining corporation?

If we take on board the idea that increased population equals more environmental degradation (as discussed in the previous chapter in this series), then it is logical that we should also accept that increased immigration will have the same effect as increased reproduction within any one country. Advocates of immigration control in the environment movement in the 1970s argued that large numbers of refugees who were culturally and linguistically different were a not only a threat to the environment, but also their “way of life” and ushered in a decade of debate for strict immigration measures including Australia’s contentious refugee detention regime.

These arguments were used by the US’s Sierra Club, Americans for Immigration Control (AIC) and Zero Population Growth in the 1970s, and continue to this day. AIC’s website, revealing the uneasy association between nationalism, racism and immigration control, says immigration is “causing present-day patriots to question how many more this land can absorb and support with its diminishing natural resources, urban blight, overcrowded schools, and undereducated children”

Australia’s own population and immigration control advocates, Sustainable Population Australia (SPA), maintain that, except for extreme humanitarian need, we should dramatically restrict immigration into Australia. Dr John Coulter, President of Sustainable Population Australia says there are better ways of helping the world’s 12–20 million refugees than bringing them to Australia. Coulter’s organisation blames immigrants for unemployment and housing prices as well as environmental degradation. Tim Flannery, populist Australia biologist and population control advocate says immigration is the easiest way to control problem population. They make the assumption, as discussed in part I, that there is a simple connection between numbers and loss of biodiversity.

Whatever the intended agenda of SPA, their position on immigration tends to align them with right wing or even racist organisations. The grotty side of immigration detention is accepted by SPA and their kind as a necessity to the higher end of preserving the abstract (and unattainable) notion of a pristine environment.

On the other side of this argument we find mostly humanitarian groups and but a few environmentalists. Most environmentalists are silent on the issue, or have fallen for the simplistic, isolationist idea that Australia is an ecological island as much as it is a national one. But this is no longer a reality in a world of global warming (if it ever was). The pro-immigration environmentalists rightly point out that Australia’s environmental woes are not the result of accepting refugees or immigrants, but of 200 years of mismanagement.

The “open borders” movement is a far left school of thought that advocates no border control and the free flow of people. They argue that the capitalist system itself it to blame for both environmental destruction and the notion of border control - because the free flow of money and business (no matter how ecologically irrational) is the accepted norm, and rich transnational corporations are not bound by border restrictions in the way people are. In practice this limits the free movement of workers and the poor, while enabling a very rich elite to do business where ever they like. People are thus less free and more controlled by immigration laws based entirely on their wealth, often at the price of their welfare. Those laws protect environmentally and inhumane practices, so let’s dump them.

Australia has behaved particularly reprehensibly on this count. Both Liberal and Labor governments have benefited from the political mileage they get from tapping into the most base racism in our society by advocating the incarceration of refugees and so-called ‘illegal’ immigrants. The paradigm of detention criminalises people in need, locking them up without just cause, psychologically damaging refugees and their children, who are often already the victims of torture, war or threat in the country they have fled. Hence the open border movement promotes the slogan “no one is illegal”. Certainly, where global issue like climate change are concerned, borders are meaningless. Australia can expect to feel the pressure of the 150 million environmental refugees, estimated by Norman Myers, to be created in our region due to climate change.

A notable exception to the environment movement’s acceptance of population control and reduced immigration is the position of Friends of the Earth Australia who note the importance of ‘fair share’:

Australia has the highest per capita greenhouse gas (GHG) emission rates of any industrialised nation on the planet, at about 26.7 tonnes per person per year (1). This is twice the average level of other wealthy countries (13.4 tonnes) and 25% higher than emissions per person in the United States (21.2 tonnes). Our energy intensive economy and lifestyle is typical of the developed world, which has been responsible for over 80% of all GHG emissions from human sources on the planet. Australia, with only 20 million people, produces around 1.1% of global emissions. Immigration, Population and Environment Friends of the Earth Australia position paper

FoEA emphasises that immigrants, refugees in particular, are not the cause of the threats to our environment, rather “existing land use, resource extraction, production and consumption patterns and infrastructure trends” are to blame.

At what human cost should environmentalists embrace population and immigration control? At the price of refusing the rights of people fleeing persecution, torture and war? As FoEA maintains, the environment movement must necessarily include the needs of the humans in it: and peaceful and just means that “show a commitment to tolerant democracy rather than being a product of a spurious application of an environmental analysis” are the only way to achieve that.

A good read: Cam Walkers article: Environmental Racism in Australia

Next time: Wilderness without people

Does it make sense, or is it even possible to advocate the preservation of wilderness? Is there a middle ground that can preserve the rights of nature and the rights of the human beings living in it?