ABSTRACT
Meanwhile the development of the external economy, itself partly conditional upon resource exploitation and contributing significantly to environmental deterioration, has created livelihood opportunities elsewhere, in urban areas, manufacturing, corporate agriculture, and extractive industry. Communications and the media have increasingly bridged the gap, raising people's awareness and facilitating their access to the opportunities provided therein. This, in turn, may be working against people's inclination to adopt in situ adjustment strategies: movement may in simple terms be seen and used as an easier short-term option and a better long-term strategy. We should also not lose sight of the social and cultural contexts within which migration decisions are made. People may move when economic conditions apparently deem it unnecessary, because of the social and cultural value which is attached to movement - this is certainly in line with the historical evidence for Sarawak. Paradoxically, people may decline the option of movement when prevailing economic conditions would appear
The above thus emphasises the great complexity of the nexus between environmental change and population movement. However, the literature on this subject has failed adequately to recognise the complexity and wide diversity of human responses to environmental degradation. Most attention hitherto has focused on the phenomenon of 'ecological' or 'environmental refugees' (EI-Hinnawi, 1985;Jacobson, 1988; Myers, 1993), which the World Commission on Environment and Development identifies as a 'recent phenomenon' (WCED, 1987: 102). In reality, it is intense world scrutiny that is quite recent: the problem has been around for quite some time but, in the main, has occurred within national boundaries and thus has tended to be less visible, emotive and controversial. Its scale and profile is, however, increasing very rapidly: Westing (1992) speculates that the growth in refugees and internally displaced persons from 26.4 million in 1986 to 41.5 million in 1990 is attributable primarily to the growing body of 'environmental refugees'. According to Jacobson (1988) there were an estimated 10 million environmentally displaced persons in the late 1980s, compared with 17 million official refugees displaced by warfare, strife and persecution. However, because governments generally take little official account of this hitherto unconventional category, Myers (1993) estimates the number of 'environmentally displaced' to be as high as 25 million, and predicts an increase to 150 million by the year 2050 in a world increasingly affected by the 'greenhouse effect' and sea-level rise - although this is a worst-case scenario.
