Rehumanising refugee camps through sustainable environmental interventions: exploring the need for green initiatives in and around refugee camps in Lesvos

Abstract

‘68.5 million displaced people worldwide’ is a common phrase, known to most in the humanitarian field to emphasize the importance of the attention the refugee crisis needs (UNHCR, 2018). What we are unaware of, is that 7.6 million out of this 68.5 million people currently live in refugee camps all over the world, 85% of the 7.6 million in developing countries. This thesis explores the processes by which these refugee camps are rendered unsustainable, thereby dehumanizing its inhabitants. It elaborates why environmental sustainability as a baseline for holistic sustainability would contribute to rehumanize camps. This research is situated in Lesvos, Greece, a longstanding hotspot of transition to the European Union. The methodology followed was inductive, with an ethnographic approach to conducting interviews and socializing with NGOs, INGOs and asylum seekers on Lesvos. The main findings of my research have been, a) how asylum seekers are dehumanized, both spatially, via the isolating infrastructural layouts they are made to live in, and socially, by the confiscation of their constructive agencies, b) how asylum seekers are consistently subjected to substandard aid, especially in terms of food aid. In conclusion, there is evidence that supports the use of ‘green initiatives’ within refugee camps, as a means to attain sustainability while asylum seekers become contributing members of their society and further, to supplement food aid. In doing so, environmental interventions point towards a more sustainable mode of aid delivery and help rehumanize refugee camps.