Maybe we’ve grown tired of recycled guesstimates of the numbers likely to be displaced by more extreme weather and rising seas, and the seeming lack of political will to help them in a concrete way.

Most journalists covering climate issues will already have written one or two features about people fleeing encroaching oceans on low-lying Pacific Islands or unable to return to storm-battered villages on the Bangladesh coast. Are we running out of fresh ideas, and if so, why?

These days, many researchers are wary of forecasting climate-related displacement in the coming decades, aware that their methodology will be scrutinised and often found wanting. Meanwhile, efforts to craft national and international laws and policies to fill the yawning gap on climate migrants crawl along with few tangible results.

The World Migration Report 2010, released over the weekend by the International Organization for Migration (IOM), is an attempt to remind governments of their responsibilities when it comes to displacement caused by sudden weather disasters or more gradual environmental changes, like shrinking water supplies.

The report opts for a low-key, nuts-and-bolts approach, exploring how to build on existing frameworks, and emphasising the duty of states to mitigate the threat from climate hazards to their populations, and to support those who have no alternative but to move within or across borders, either temporarily or permanently.

The report takes a conservative stance on statistics, saying that the best available data on environmental migration are probably the figures on people displaced by natural disasters. It cites a U.N. estimate from 2008, for example, of 20 million people uprooted as a result of sudden onset climate-related weather events.

“Migration resulting from environmental change is likely to continue to increase in the foreseeable future. The effects of climate change are likely to exacerbate this trend, although it is not always appropriate to ascribe environmental changes that might precipitate migration to climate change,” the report says cautiously, adding that deforestation, poor land management or a combination of factors could also push people to leave their homes for environmental reasons.

Overall, it says environmental change will contribute to raising the number of international migrants – estimated at 214 million in 2010 – to 405 million by 2050, if the rate of increase continues at the same pace as during the last 20 years.

GLOBAL DATABASE NEEDED

One of the report’s most interesting recommendations on environmental migration is to establish a global database on the phenomenon – a challenge that would require standardised definitions, the development of internationally comparable indicators and stronger capacities for national reporting. IOM says it, or another U.N. agency, may be best placed to lead such a project.

In preparation, it has proposed setting up an independent Commission on Migration and Environment Data (CMED) to develop practical guidelines on collecting and sharing information.

While international protection for climate “refugees” remains sorely lacking, the report says national laws and policies on internal displacement should be strengthened as a first step, given that most people uprooted by environmental change move within their own countries.

Currently, only around 30 countries have introduced legislation or strategies to implement the internationally agreed Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement, which explicitly include people displaced as a result of natural disasters.

And when it comes to movement across borders, the migration report says a short-term fix would be for states to amend their national immigration laws and policies in cases where the states neighbour or have strong migration links with countries or regions threatened by environmental change in the near future.

It cites a handful of countries that have made some provision. The United States, for example, allows foreigners already in the country to stay if they can’t go home due to an environmental disaster, and Sweden allows people affected by environmental disasters to seek asylum.

Colombia and Spain have an unusual example of a labour mobility programme that extends to populations in high-risk zones of natural disasters, the report says. But it makes clear that a comprehensive international framework for dealing with environmental migrants is still a long way off.

AFRICAN FARMERS AT RISK

Another piece of work that picks up the migration ball is a new study examining the potential impact of four-degree and above temperature increases on food production in sub-Saharan Africa, published in the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society Series.

By the 2090s, most of southern Africa could see growing seasons shortened by at least 20 percent, according to simulations carried out using various climate models, while eastern Africa could see modestly expanded seasons.

For sub-Saharan Africa as a whole, a temperature rise of five degrees would depress maize production by 24 percent and bean production by over 70 percent. And the rate of crop failure would increase in all parts of the region except Central Africa, with much of southern Africa’s rain-fed agriculture failing every other season.

“More frequent crop failures could unleash waves of climate migrants in a massive redistribution of hungry people,” lead author Philip Thornton of the Kenya-based International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) warned in a statement.

ILRI Director General Carlos Sere told AlertNet the researchers had not tried to work out how many poor farmers could be forced from their land by climate change, but many in southern Africa would find their current practice of cultivating crops and rearing livestock – known as “mixed farming” – no longer viable.

“They will have to give up their livelihoods and migrate. In areas where there may already be conflict and other stresses, this will create an enormous amount of tension,” he said.

Sere hopes the paper will act as a wake-up call to government officials gathering in Cancun, Mexico, this week for the annual U.N. climate conference.

There, amid lowered expectations for progress towards a global deal, environmental migration will have to jostle for position with a host of other climate change concerns, and pushing it back up the agenda looks set to be a fairly tough challenge.

Source: Reuters AlertNet

The United Nations Climate Change Conference starts tomorrow in Cancun and runs for two weeks. I am travelling right now where internet is limited so I will try my best keep the blog updated. I will be in Cancun during the second week to attend and cover a few of the related meetings. Below are some of the migration and displacement side events happening at COP16. If you know of any other events please contact me and I will add them to this post.

Displacement and migration: Examples of initiatives and activities to support resilience and adaptation
United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA)
Tuesday, November 30 – 18:30—20:00
This event will focus on national and sub-national level policy and programme implementation, including assistance in the development of policies on displacement and climate change; advocacy on displacement; and dissemination of tools that specifically target vulnerable communities such as refugees, internally displaced persons and migrants.

Climate change and forced migration (organized with Bread for the World and UNU)
Stockholm Environemntal Istitiute/IIED/IISD
Part of the “Development and Climate Days at COP-16″
Sunday, December 5 – Day Two – 1:30 pm – 3pm. By RSVP only.
- Chair: Koko Warner, UNU
- Ferdausur Rahman, Network on Climate Change in Bangladesh (NCCB)
- Peter Emberson, the Pacific Conference of Churches
- Isabel Cruz Hernández, Mexican Association of Credit Unions from the Social Sector
- Resettlement needs in Papua New Guinea, Sophia Wirshing, Bread for the World
- Africa presentation tbc

Rights for climate induced forced migrants : Responsibility of international community
Coastal Association for Social Transformation Trust (COAST Trust)
Monday, December 6 -16:45—18:15
There will be 2 billion displaced people due to climate induced problems, alone in Bangladesh these figure will be 30 millions by the year 2010, they should have rights to life and livelihood in view different UN convenants.

Climate Change, Environment and Migration Alliance (CCEMA): understanding impacts and finding solutions
International Organization for Migration (IOM)
Wednesday, December 8 – 15:00—16:30
IOM, UNU and other CCEMA partners highlight key questions and challenges for migration and displacement. Delegates and experts discuss proactive approaches for policy and practice in the context of climate change and adaptation, with relevant case studies.

The audio visual department of LEDARS has documented the forced migration and human suffering in the southwest coastal area of Bangladesh. This film is locally funded and produced which is different from the others I have posted before on this website. It is about 10 minutes long and is in English subtitles. Unfortunately, the last two minutes are unwatchable.

Source: LEDARS BD channel on YouTube

Aisha Alim 42, a former Lake Chad farmer, now earns a meager leaving selling fried peanuts in Briketteri after watching his farmland near Lake Chad run out of water.

“It has been a bitter reality to swallow and a battle for survival,” he said. “The desert keeps encroaching on farmland as the water recedes and this makes it difficult for farming activity to thrive. I used to grow onions, peppers and maize but my farming area turned dry and I had no choice except to relocate.”

Mahmadou Bello, 52, who once fished in Lake Chad, similarly brought his wife and six children to Cameroon’s capital two years ago when the lake could no longer provide enough fish.

“We used to make enough money as fishermen by the shores of the lake and my wife was also involved in fish smoking because there was enough catch,” he said. Now, however, he has had to take up work as a butcher to support his family, he said.

Lake Chad, a large shallow freshwater lake that borders Chad, Niger, Nigeria and Cameroon, has shrunk in size by as much as 90 percent over the last four decades, forcing a growing number of farmers, fishermen and herders who depend on it to seek new livelihoods elsewhere.

A recent study by NASA and the German Aerospace Centre blames climate change – particularly more erratic rainfall – and human activity – including population hikes, overgrazing and overuse of lake water for irrigation – for the gradual disappearance of one of Africa’s biggest lakes.

The study warns that urgent action is needed by members of the Lake Chad Basin Commission (LCBC), charged with overseeing the water body, to avoid further dramatic shrinking of the lake, which provides water or livelihoods for more than 20 million people in the region.

FEAR OF POTENTIAL CONFLICTS

At the last World Food Security Summit in Rome, Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi sounded a warning on the dangers associated with Lake Chad’s decline, saying the loss of water might well spur serious conflict in the region.

“Something has to be done to save Lake Chad from the advancing desert. If it dries up it will be a real danger not only to the basin population but to the entire African continent that depends on the fish and agricultural products from the area,” he argued.

Already there are growing conflicts among herders scrambling for limited pasture and fishermen fighting over declining stocks of fish, as well as confrontations – including some violent clashes – between migrating herders and fishermen and the people already living in the new communities where the migrants settle.

“In Nigeria and Cameroon, cattle herder migrants who move southward end up competing for land resources with host communities. This has led to some of the recent conflicts between herders and farming communities in northeastern Nigeria and the Adamawa region of Cameroon,” a report by the Lake Chad Basin Commission said.

Water shortages are already causing a serious shortage of animal feed in the Lake Chad region, resulting in cattle deaths and plummeting livestock production, the report said.

On the whole, average household income in the region has fallen by more than half in recent years, the study said, and fish catches that hit 140 metric tons a year in the 1960s and 1970s have now fallen to below 80,000 metric tons a year.

Farming – which employs over half of the lake basin’s population – also has been hard hit, producing growing food scarcity, said Abdullam Urmar, executive secretary of the Lake Chad Basin Commission.

Of the 1.6 million hectares that would benefit from irrigation in the lake drainage area, only 115,000 hectares are actually irrigated, largely as a result of falling water levels, he said.

SAVING THE RECEEDING LAKE

Efforts to stem the problems at Lake Chad are complicated by the fact that so many countries are involved.

According to Aboubakari Sarki, Cameroon’s minister of livestock, fisheries and animal husbandry, protecting the lake cannot be the work of a single country.

“This is a decision that has to be taken by the five member countries of the commission – Cameroon, Chad, Niger, Nigeria, and the Central African Republic. More so, the commission is under the supervision of the United Nations Development Programme (and) that has to be consulted,” he said.

One of the measures put in place by the commission already to try to protect the lake is strict regulation of the use of its water under a standing charter signed in 1994 by the lake’s neighbors and other lake water users in the region, including Algeria, Sudan and Libya.

Other proposals include channeling the water of the Oubangui River in the Central African Republic to Lake Chad, an effort that has yet to find funding.

Patrick Akwa, Cameroon’s secretary general of the Ministry of Environment, said the feasibility study alone for the project would cost more than $50 million.

“The project involves damming the Oubangui River at Palambo in the Central African Republic and channeling some of its water through a navigable canal to Lake Chad,” he said.

Elias Ntungwe Ngalame is an award-winning environmental writer with Cameroon’s Eden Group of newspapers.

Source: Reuters AlertNet

I have posted before about one of the fastest growing “megacities” in the world, Dhaka, Bangladesh. Nearly 500,000 migrants flow into the capital city each year, many motivated by environmental pressures. Erik German and Solana Pyne of GlobalPost examine the future of Dhaka in a five-part multimedia special report. This series is currently shown on PBS Newshour, with the first part aired on September 8, 2010.

The five parts of the series are:

• Part One: Dhaka the fastest growing megacity in the world
• Part Two: The dreams of Dhaka’s garment girls
• Part Three: Disasters drive mass migration to Dhaka
• Part Four: Looking on the bright side of Earth’s growing slums
• Part Five: Who can solve a problem like Dhaka?

The video posted above is part three, as its focus is on both slow onset and sudden distasters resulting in individuals and families migrating to the urban sprawl of Dhaka in search of a better life. Click here to be taken to the main page of GlobalPost series where you can access the videos and news report for all five parts.

Photo credit: Matiullah Achakzai/European Pressphoto Agency

This is a great blog post I found on The Hill’s Congress Blog. It is by Alice Thomas, Climate Displacement Programme Manager for Refugees International, and encapsulates the Pakistan crisis with a climate change and migration viewpoint.

(The Hill’s Congress Blog) August 18, 2010 – The devastating floods in Pakistan have claimed the lives of at least 1,500 people and rendered millions more homeless and displaced.  According to the United Nations, the deluge’s human toll, which has reportedly affected 14 million Pakistanis, is worse than the 2004 tsunami, the January earthquake in Haiti, and the 2005 earthquake in Pakistan combined.  The record-breaking floods – along with other recent unprecedented climate-related catastrophes such as the heat wave in Russia and torrential rains and subsequent mudslides in China – are in line with the predictions of climate scientists that global warming will cause an increase in the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events.

According to climate vulnerability indices, Pakistan is one of the world’s most at-risk countries due not only to its exposure to climate-related hazards such as flooding and droughts, but also its human vulnerability in terms of the capacity of individuals, communities, and societies to effectively respond to such hazards based on a combination of natural, human, social, financial and physical factors.

Yet getting the public and policy makers to see the Pakistan floods and other recent disasters not only as a portent of things to come but also as an indication that climate change is already occurring is likely to prove challenging. This is due in part to the inability of scientists to prove that any one storm, drought or flood was caused by global warming, as opposed to a variety of other factors that affect weather.  Thus, while meteorological data show that the number of extreme weather events has tripled since the 1980s, and that 2010 is on track to be the warmest since reliable records began in the mid-19th century, there is a hesitancy to discuss the recent catastrophes in the broader context of the implications of climate change.

What is clear is that the United States will be making a mistake of tremendous proportions if it waits for scientific certainty with respect to climate change before developing a coherent response. Rather, the important message we must take from these catastrophes is that climate change will likely place increasing pressure on a humanitarian system that is already stressed and woefully underfunded. Moreover, the United States is not investing nearly enough to help at-risk and vulnerable countries prepare for future natural hazards that are likely to increase with frequency and intensity in years to come.

For example, in 2009, less than ten percent USAID’s Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA) budget, or approximately $86.7 million, was devoted to disaster risk reduction activities worldwide.  The UN is now estimating that at least $460 million – more than 5 times that amount – is needed to respond to the immediate humanitarian crisis in Pakistan alone. Ramping up the amount of money we spend to help vulnerable populations prepare for disasters before they strike will result in substantial savings over the long term – both financial and in terms of loss of human life.

At the same time, we need to be investing more to help fragile populations adapt to climate change by building their resiliency to its anticipated adverse effects and promoting livelihoods that can endure those impacts.  While the President’s request for nearly $334 million for international climate adaptation in the Fiscal Year 2011 budget is a step in the right direction, it falls far short of what is needed.

Helping the most fragile and vulnerable states, like Pakistan, prepare for the anticipated impacts of climate change also represents an important contribution to increased political stability. In Pakistan, militant offensives in the northwest region have displaced more than a million Pakistanis within their own borders, in addition to approximately two million Afghans who are seeking refuge there.  The flooding, which has affected many of these same areas, has displaced millions more.

Helping to build the resiliency of Pakistanis to climate change impacts including flooding, droughts and water scarcity would go a long way towards decreasing political instability in the region, and more importantly, minimizing human suffering and loss of life.

Source: The Hill’s Congress Blog

This year, World Humanitarian Day comes at a time when the international humanitarian community has been called upon to assist the countless number of people affected by the devastating floods in Pakistan, which some are calling the worst humanitarian disaster in recent history.

Below is The 2010 World Humanitarian Day project. It is a collaborative film shot in over 40 countries in under 9 weeks, on a shoestring budget – with the goal of showing the enormous diversity of places, faces and endeavors of humanitarian aid workers in 2010. It was filmed by humanitarian staff and freelance filmmakers from around the globe (over 50 contributors in total) with all time donated.

This year’s theme is “Home” in recognition of the plight of more than 40 million uprooted people around the world, many of those who leave their homes due to the increasing effects of climate change. Below is the promotional video for World Refugee Day 2010, featuring UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador Angelina Jolie.

Orphaned at an early age, Swdwmsri lived with her elder brother and his family in Bijni, a rural village in Assam province’s Chirang district. But increasingly unpredictable weather conditions – drought one year, incessant and untimely rains the next – made life gradually harder as the family’s crops repeatedly failed.

With the family on the verge of starvation, Swdwmsri had to drop out of school. Her brother decided not to waste money sowing new crops and instead used his remaining cash to migrate to a nearby city, Guwahati, in search of a job.

Swdwmsri realized she had to find her own means of livelihood. But she had few options. It was then she met a lady from her village who promised her a good job in Guwahati.

THE PERILS OF URBAN WORK

Both nervous and excited, she took up work as a poorly paid maid in several households. She also worked as a baby-sitter in one home – until she was molested by the landlord and forced to flee to a friend’s home. Even the busy city traffic made her anxious, and once she was nearly run down by a speeding bus.

Dismayed by what she saw as a harsh life in the city, Swdwmsri longed to go back to her native village and her favourite activity – weaving the traditional patterns and motifs of her tribe, the Bodos. But like many women displaced by climate change, she found she had few resources or options to improve her situation.

Then one day, as she was waiting to catch a bus, she met an old acquaintance. Bimala, another migrant from Bijni, said she had been able to return home and find work with the Roje Eshansholi (Beloved Weaving) Cooperative Society, a weavers’ collective based in Kokrajhar.

The cooperative, set up by schoolteacher Malati Rani Narzary, seeks to create alternative work and dignity at home for impoverished Bodo tribal women vulnerable to climate change-related displacement, ethnic conflict, and human trafficking.

“I realized that Bodo women … were some of the finest weavers in the region,” Narzary said. “I decided to hone their weaving skills to suit the demands of the national as well as the international market.”

After initial training, weavers and spinners in the program are separated into self-help groups that work in their native villages.

SPINNING A NEW LIFE IN MUGA SILK

From a modest beginning of only five members and four looms in 1996, the society now has over 1,000 women beneficiaries in Kokrajhar, Bongaigaon and Chirang district, some in very remote areas. More than 500 spinners and 50 weavers work in muga silk, the traditional golden silk of Assam.

Young girls like Swdwmsri and Bimala are allowed to stay at a women’s residence at the project’s headquarters, where they feel at home and secure.

“We send part of our earnings to our families. But we would rather stay here and do what we enjoy most – weaving,” Bimala said.

Fashion designers now visit the weavers to help them create new products that will sell well. Swdwmsri remembers how a lady from the National Institute of Design in the Indian city of Ahmedabad came to relate that their traditional handloom material has been turned into scarves, cushion covers, curtains, table mats and other goods.

“I have never used a table mat in my life. But I am happy that my handmade products adorn the homes of the rich and the famous and even plush hotels in big cities,” Bimala said.

Narzary’s aim of giving Bodo weavers a larger platform for their efforts has taken shape in the form of the Bodoland Regional Apex Weavers and Cooperative Federation, an umbrella organization for all the weavers in the area.

The organization has helped weavers showcase their products in trade and textile fairs and fashion shows.

“I feel proud that apart from preserving our age-old weaving tradition, we are also able to hold back our young and vulnerable girls from working as domestic help in big cities. Moreover, they cannot be lured by the unscrupulous middleman and end up in brothels,” said Narzary, who is chairperson of the federation.

Teresa Rehman is a journalist based in Northeast India. She can be reached at www.teresarehman.net

Source: Reuters AlertNet

Government delegates had in front of them the current version of the draft negotiating text under the Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-term Cooperative Action under the Convention (AWG-LCA). There is one entry that deals with climate change and mobility found on paragraph 4(f) on page 17 of the text and it reads:

4. Invites all Parties to enhance adaptation action under the Copenhagen Adaptation Framework [for Implementation] taking into account their common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities, and specific national and regional development priorities, objectives and circumstances, [and whereby developing country Parties shall be supported by developed country Parties and in accordance with paragraph 6 below], to undertake, inter alia:
[...]
(f) Measures to enhance understanding, coordination and cooperation related to national, regional and international climate change induced displacement, migration and planned relocation, where appropriate;

The language used here has been streamlined even more from the previous version of the text presented in Copenhagen. Click here for a great summary of the entire meeting from Climate-L.org. The next meeting is set for August 2 in Bonn.