International Migration, COVID-19, and Environmental Sustainability: Volume 32

This chapter presents research and analysis on the Institute for Economics and Peace’s (IEP’s) index in the Ecological Threat Report (ETR). In the analysis, 178 countries are examined at the sub-national level, accounting for 99.9% of the global population. The estimate consists of five indicators that aggregate to yield an index of ecological threats. These five indicators are water risk, the prevalence of stunting, the impact of natural disasters, projected population growth and projected temperature rise. The ETR is a tool that can be used to identify the countries that are at the highest risk of ecological threats. The index identifies that 30 countries facing the highest level of ecological threats as well as low levels of resilience are home to 1.26 billion people. At the end of 2020, in these 30 countries, 68% of the total people were forcibly displaced beyond their borders. As these 30 countries suffer collectively from the highest ecological threats and without the reversal of ecological degradation, displacement is very likely to continue. Without urgent development, ecological threats will continue to create humanitarian emergencies and will likely increase without a sustained effort to reverse the current trend.

The crisis of globalisation and the rise of the COVID-19 pandemic pose new threats to the national security of all countries. States have been increasingly challenged on their role, particularly in the economic order. Their actions concerning pandemic, ecology, climate or air pollution have been strongly inspired by the decisions of specialised international organisations, too often advised by dominant commercial and financial interests. In this context, states have no longer been able to assume the full range of national security components. Mercantilists considered that dependence on a State’s foreign trade led to an unacceptable reduction to the power of the Prince. Today, all countries are dependent on others, and then economic wars are becoming more and more likely. Armed warfare between states remains a potential response to these possible disruptions of essential intermediate consumption or to the search for power. Moreover, the lack of solidarity perceived during the pandemic testifies to the maintenance of political and economic power relations between States and the priority given to national interests to the detriment of international public goods. The pandemic highlights the inability of states to find common solutions to today’s global problems, thus developing a strong sense of insecurity among citizens.

While COVID-19 temporarily created worldwide immobility, the gradual opening up of borders spurred one of the largest return migration episodes ever, and it continues to this day. Disappearing jobs, decreasing wages, inadequate social protection systems and networks, xenophobia, wage theft and overall uncertainty are among the prominent factors that have influenced this movement. Emigrants from the Gulf-India Migration Corridor were particularly affected by these forces and returned en masse, uncertain of their future. When people come back to their home country after living abroad, particularly due to exogenous shocks, it raises concerns about whether their decision to return was truly voluntary, their ability to adjust to being back home and the long-term effects on their reintegration. Additionally, it is uncertain what kind of impact return migrants have on their home country’s development. In this chapter, the authors examine the recent trend of return migration since the outbreak of COVID-19 and how it affects the Gulf-India corridor. The authors also take a closer look at the state of Kerala through a unique survey conducted by the authors and provide possible future scenarios for emigration in this region, along with recommendations for policy.

This chapter tests theoretically and empirically the existence of a stable relationship between energy consumption and CO2 emissions. Based on microeconomics and physics, a model has been specified and applied to annual data for twenty countries, which representing 61 percent of the world’s population in 2018, over the period 1995–2015. The data are from the International Energy Agency (2019) and econometric techniques including panel data and causality tests have been used. The results indicate that there is a causal relationship between energy consumption and CO2 emissions. In general, consumers cannot directly change emissions caused by production processes, but they can act on emissions caused by their own domestic energy consumption. Approximately three quarters of domestic energy consumption is due to heating and domestic hot water consumption. Taking into account the lower emissions and the lower economic cost of the initial investment, four potential energy systems have been selected for use in heating and domestic hot water. Their social returns have been assessed across nine of the twenty countries in the sample over a lifecycle of 25 years from 2018: France, Portugal, Ireland, Spain, Iceland, Germany, United Kingdom, Morocco and the United States. Cost-benefit analysis techniques have been used for this purpose and the results indicate that the use of thermal water, where applicable, is the most socially profitable system among the proposed systems, followed by natural gas. The least socially profitable systems are those using electricity.

This chapter aims to study the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the inequality in countries, define it as a new conflict for sustainable development, and determine the prospects of conflict management. This chapter is based on the Theory of Conflicts and such methods as analysis of variations, trend and regression analysis, and simplex method. It is found that the variation of the COVID-19 case rate in the developed (by the example of G7) and developing (by the example of BRICS) countries was very high (140.99%). The variation of the COVID-19 death rate is lower, but it remains rather high (63.29%). The economic growth rate for the whole sample of countries under the influence of the COVID-19 pandemic reduced by 404.16% in 2021, while the quality of life reduced by 1.86% on average. The COVID-19 pandemic increased the inequality in countries, thus creating a new conflict of sustainable development. The perspectives of conflict management of sustainable development are connected to the improvement of the practice of using digital technologies, which helps to reduce the inequality in countries. By the example of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, the offered recommendations would have allowed reducing the decline of economic growth rate by 95.01% and preventing the decline in quality of life.

Globalisation is under significant threat due to the climate of uncertainty and conflicting trends caused by the new challenges of climate change impact further multiplied by the COVID-19 pandemic. Disaster risk reduction (DRR) effort is directly affected by finding new ways and strategies. World’s international cooperation, technology and knowledge transfer between countries are seriously affected and are directly impacting sustainability and even human survival. Global DRR strategy is struggling to face the unprecedented challenges brought by climate change and now COVID-19 pandemic has multiplied the uncertain climate. In this environment, some new emerging challenges are in the world healthcare systems, nutrition for millions of marginalised populations, working style, sustainable supply chain, even reducing anarchy governance, fear of being unsafe and changing beliefs and confidence of people in the system. In this environment, the pressing question is how DRR strategy can reposition and find better methods to deliver, globally, nationally and locally. The chapter focusses on the new emerging issues in the DRR strategy that the scientific community ought to address.

The Sundarbans is a unique ecosystem, the most expansive mangrove system in the world covering the Ganga–Brahmaputra–Meghna delta system and spread over 10,000 sq.km across India and Bangladesh. The Indian Sundarbans have been witnessed to large-scale conversion of mangroves to settled agriculture and steady growth of population over the decades. With time, while population growth has taken place, there has been no significant change in the development scenario, as the agriculture and fishing dependent communities have remained trapped in the vicious cycle of poverty. Its deltaic location and its position in the path of cyclones, tidal surges and seasonal floods have made the people and landscape of Sundarbans more vulnerable than ever before. Cyclones affecting this region have grown both in frequency and intensity over the years and have caused devastation to the land, homes, lives and livelihoods. The problem of salinity has also affected the region relentlessly. Given this scenario, scenario of progressing vulnerabilities, livelihood losses have led to a gradual increase in out-migration of the adult male population. This disaster-led outmigration from Sundarban region as a whole has affected the social fabric of displaced communities to a great extent. This chapter makes an attempt to discuss results of sample surveys across six villages in three CD Blocks of Sagar, Gosaba and Kultali to trace the nature and dimension of the migration patterns of the region.

Introduction: Human values serve as the foundation for human society. To establish and safeguard our family and community, we practice values such as friendship, love, wisdom, self-control, responsibility, forgiveness and so on. The philosophies of society and life are guided by values. They are necessary for the establishment of social bonds and norms for acceptable behaviour. Values are drawn from socio-cultural and prophetic ideologies. However, the meaning of values varies from person to person, whereas institutional values are more strict and less malleable in nature. Person’s values are shaped by their experiences in a variety of fields, and those values change through time and from different perspectives. Children are growing up in a world that is used to frivolous spending and impulsive purchases as the result of consumerism. Parents in a nuclear family are preoccupied with their jobs and often do not spend quality time with their children. As a result, they try to make up for it by giving their children expensive gifts; children are receiving abundant luxury before asking for it, so they begin to place value on material things and develop little or no emotional bonds. On top of that, these young minds are becoming exposed and addicted to the cell phones and other technological devices. The young children are becoming numb to their surroundings and relationships, and as a result, they are being immersed in a fantasy world of their own makings. The upshot is that these young people build their own universe that is nonrealistic and disconnected from the rest of the world. When these children grow up, they continue to live in their own make-belief world. They become egotistical, with little emotional attachment, loyalty, respect, sensitivity or devotion to other people or things. They are becoming increasingly distant, anxious, troubled and unstable in their personal life due to their high ambitions, thirst for more, attachment to luxury, lack of commitment to relationships, contempt for standards and conventions and separation from other connections. This impacts their personal and professional lives. Research says that the majority of professionals and teachers in Management Schools feel stressed due to target pressure, fear of failure, managing their work-life balance, etc. and often succumb to depression as well as death due to this. The goal of modern management education is to help students develop holistically. However, the challenge is do the teachers themselves believe in the Life Values that they are supposed to inculcate among students. Many good B-Schools are developing programs to teach their students these ‘life-skills’. Are they, however, truly fruitful? Is it possible to create a sustainable young generation that is psychologically robust and capable of overcoming life’s challenges?

Purpose of the Study: The chapter follows the Rokeach Values (instrumental and terminal values) system as a framework for study. The study has examined the (i) pattern of the locus of control (LOC) of professionals and teachers and (ii) relation between LOC and work value and its’ importance in two occupational groups, viz. teachers and professionals of a company and tries to understand their importance to build a sustainable career. The purpose of the study is to realise the perspectives of different stakeholders in society, such as corporate and academicians, about the life values needed to be developed among young budding managers, which will result in a sustainable business.

Research Methodology: A mixed method approach of research methodology will be followed to understand the role of the value system in creating a sustainable young generation. This chapter will administer a questionnaire to gauge professionals and teachers who have grown up in the modern environment of getting ‘anything, anywhere, anytime’, and through some in-depth interviews, it will try to understand their perspectives about the importance of values in their life.

Scope of the Study: This chapter will focus on the young professionals and young teachers and the influencers in their life, as they will be molding the business decisions and decision makers, respectively, of the future.

Originality and Values: The chapter is original in nature, and it will attempt to define ‘life skills’ differently through the lens of sustainable values that must be acquired in order to produce a sustainable future.

Outcome: Work values are culture-specific. The chapter suggests that by changing the importance of path values and terminal values of their human resources towards more internal control can help the organisation to solve some human resource problems as well as improve the organisational performance to achieve sustainable behaviour. This research will help to provide an insight into the difference between skills and values. The aim is to highlight that skills pursued without values can never attain the sustainable world which is the urgent need of the hour. It will also serve as a guide for the management of colleges in terms of which values and skills should be instilled in their teachers to build a sustainable future so that they can disseminate the same to the students and how this might be accomplished.

The world faces a catastrophic Coronavirus (COVID-19) disease, where almost all countries have reported positive cases with a global number of more than 262 million cases and the death toll of nearly 5 million people (Johns Hopkins University, 30 November 2021). This pandemic affects not only the health sector but also other sectors, particularly the economic and cultural sectors. East African Community (EAC) and Indonesia are among the countries affected by COVID-19. The objectives of this study are to discuss the strategy employed by the EAC and the Indonesian Governments in dealing with the COVID-19 outbreak, the needs to be done to prevent the spread of COVID-19 and the mitigation measures to minimise the adverse outcomes of this COVID-19 disaster in their particular communities. The study’s academic survey and data were obtained from scientific literature (Ministry of Health from EAC and Indonesia), World Health Organization (WHO), mass media reports and research institutions. The results of the study show that the strategies used by East Africa Community and Indonesia to manage and mitigate the negative impacts of COVID-19 in their areas have been successful. The number of COVID-19 infections and deaths in 2021 decreased compared to 2020, and the number of recovered people is increasing. The author advises the governments of all countries to continue to educate the society on preventive and mitigation measures for the COVID-19 outbreak, ensuring that the steps for handling the spread of this pandemic are widely known by the public, and encouraging the public to take preventative measures in facing the COVID-19 outbreak.

Trafficking¹ in human beings is gross.² It constitutes one of the most egregious violations of human rights.³ The vile nature of human trafficking is also hinged on the fact that it commodifies human beings. Hence its categorisation is modern slavery.⁴ So much of trafficking activities follow the pathways5 of other transnational forms of organised crimes and irregular cross-border movement of people.6 In response to this egregious crime, several international, regional and country laws and instruments have been used or proposed for combatting human trafficking.7 These instruments forbid trafficking in human persons and provide several preventive measures, prosecution of perpetrators and protection of victims of human trafficking.8 The number of state parties to the United Nations Protocol to prevent suppress and punish trafficking in persons, especially women and children, supplementing the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime (the Palermo Protocol), demonstrates the global commitment to combatting human trafficking. However, the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on legal systems, and the capacity of both state and private institutions to combat human trafficking, has added a knotty twist to the global problem of human trafficking. This essay looks at the trends of human trafficking in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. It also highlights international law and policy approaches that state parties and civil society organisations should adopt to counteract the changes and sustain the fight against human trafficking. Thus, the essay contributes to updating the legal and policy approaches to combat human trafficking in this era.