Environmental Conservation in a Refugee Crisis: When Calling It a Cross-Cutting Issue Is Not Enough

May 22, 2019 | Haseeb Mb. Irfanullah
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It’s hard for me to forget 21 January 2018 − the day I first entered the world’s largest refugee camp with my International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) colleagues. More than 700,000 forcibly displaced people had taken shelter in Ukhiya in Cox’s Bazar, fleeing violence and persecution in Myanmar. I was torn: as a human being, seeing so many people living in thousands of makeshift shelters in an extremely vulnerable condition was heart-breaking. At the same time, the unprecedented destruction of thousands of hectares of forest land dismayed the conservationist in me.