“While there is growing interest in the issue of climate change and displacement, there doesn’t seem to be consensus about the ‘entry point’ into the debate. Many have tried to estimate the potential scale of displacement, with widely varying results resulting from different assumptions and methodologies. Others have analyzed the legal gaps, particularly for those who cross international borders because of the effects of climate change. Still others have sought to analyze the potential for increased conflict resulting from the effects of climate change.

Following on the observation by Jane McAdam and others that climate change is likely to produce different displacement scenarios requiring different policy solutions, I would like to reflect on one type of displacement which is likely to occur as a result of climate change: the relocation or resettlement of communities from areas which are no longer habitable because of environmental consequences of climate change. In particular I will focus on the relevance of experiences with development-forced displacement and resettlement (DFDR) in providing guidance for national policy-makers and international organizations likely to be involved in designing and implementing such relocations.

Although people displaced by development projects are considered IDPs in the definition of the Guiding Principles and in the new African Union Convention on Protection and Assistance of IDPs in Africa, and although there is a huge field of anthropologists and sociologists who have been working in this area for several decades, I think it’s fair to say that this field is almost unknown by most humanitarian actors working with refugees and IDPs. Planning for the resettlement of people to be affected by the construction of a massive dam has seemed very distant from the work of humanitarians setting up refugee camps to deal with people fleeing civil conflict or constructing temporary shelters for those displaced by natural disasters.

Moreover, development and humanitarian actors have different cultures and language which sometimes impedes communication; for example, the word ‘resettlement’ has very different meanings for UNHCR and for the World Bank. And yet as humanitarian agencies begin to consider the consequences of climate change-induced displacement, there are opportunities to learn from the experiences of colleagues working in the development field.”

Read the entire contribution here.

Climate Change and Conflict

The United Nations has estimated that there could be ‘millions’ of environmental migrants by 2020. Various think tanks, government agencies and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) have produced reports that argue that migration can be a major risk factor in the chain of effects that link climate change and violent conflict. The expectation is that climate migration will result in tensions between those displaced within their own country and the communities into which they move, as well as between so-called climate ‘refugees’ (who cross an international border) and the states that receive them.

Various triggers for conflict have been identified — competition for scarce resources or economic support (or jobs); increased demands on social infrastructure; and cultural differences based on ethnicity or nationality. All of this is thought more likely in countries or regions that already suffer from other forms of social instability and that possess limited social and economic capacity to adapt.

Climate change-related migration is most likely to be a slow process. The language in the climate security and climate migration literature, on the other hand, conjures up the image of climate change-induced migration that is likely to be out of control and therefore highly threatening. The implication is that countries in the developed ‘North’ will somehow be threatened directly by the alleged ‘influx’ of climate refugees (the term itself is nevertheless contentious) or indirectly by instabilities that might arises in regions of strategic interest.

Indeed, some of those reports worry about a likely increase in demands on the military capacity of the richer countries. Yet there is little convincing evidence that climate migration, if and/or when it does occur, will result in social unrest, conflict and regional instability. This is not to deny that migration might be a source of tension. Rather it is to question the inevitability of this relationship in the absence of reliable evidence about causal chains.

Human Insecurity

What is more certain is that both the impacts of climate change that might impel people to move and the consequences of migrating are human security issues and should be addressed as such. In Southeast Asia, as elsewhere, it is people and their communities who are most at risk from climate change and from the instability, incapacity, social and economic stress that might occur. A human security model, which takes people (or peoples) as the security referent, questions the ‘taken for granted’ assumptions and analyses within the policy community about climate change, migration, threat and (in)security.

It suggests that we should think about forced migration from unsustainable or uninhabitable lands as a source of insecurity for those whose lands and homes can no longer sustain them. Migration also generates other human insecurities, including loss of income, loss of social capital, disruption to traditional coping mechanisms and increased vulnerability for already marginalised groups, including the poor, women and children. We should worry about the way that climate-related food insecurity, malnutrition and an increased disease burden destroys lives and livelihoods, and exacerbates poverty and misery for the millions of people who are affected, rather than worrying about this only as a trigger for civil unrest and potential extremism.

Desecuritising Climate Migration

The important human security question, then, is how can we protect and assist people whose lives are disrupted by climate change. Migration is not the only response strategy. People may, for example, choose to stay in their communities and adapt to the impacts of climate change; or they may choose to stay, accept the costs of climate change and do nothing. Even if those who are most vulnerable have no choice but to move, migration does not necessarily have to implicate unrest or violence. Therefore we need to have a better understanding of the complexities of migration as a response or adaptation strategy in the face of the social, economic and environmental consequences of climate change.

We need to know what factors impel migration, as well as the factors that enable individuals and communities to adapt in ways other than moving or migrating. We need to know what kinds of governance and institutional approaches are best suited to anticipating, preventing and, where necessary, managing climate-change induced migration. And we need to think about adaptation as a security strategy that has the potential to save lives, increase individual adaptive capacity, build societal resilience and lessen the chances of conflict.

This move from a politics of security to a politics of adaptation and building resilience can be read as a process of de-securitisation of climate migration in the region. Reading this move instead as human securitisation (or perhaps even counter-securitisation) has the potential to sustain the tactical attractions of the language of security. It also brings urgent attention to the problem and redirects security policy to securing the lives, livelihoods and, wherever possible, the lands and homes of those in the region who are most vulnerable to and most insecure from the threats of climate change.

Lorraine Elliott is Professor of International Relations at the Australian National University and Senior Project Adviser in the Climate Change, Environmental Security and Natural Disasters Programme of the Asia Security Initiative, Centre for Non-Traditional Security (NTS) Studies, S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University.

Source: Eurasia Review

Yet, another significant contribution to the debate on climate migration came from the International Organization for Migration (IOM), which released a new report on “Disaster Risk Reduction, Climate Change Adaptation and Environmental Migration” (the Report). While briefly referring to IOM ongoing projects relating to climate migration, the Report takes an original perspective when presenting climate migrations as an appropriate adaptation strategy, contrasting with the current international paradigm. International organizations often considered that a first-rank political answer to climate change should consist only in mitigation efforts, ie. measures taken to prevent or, at least, reduce climate hazards; that adaptation should be a second-rank solution to limit human vulnerability to unavoidable climate hazards; and that climate migration should be considered as a third-rank “solution” that one adopts only after a failure of both mitigation and adaptation efforts. Thus, considering migration only as a means of last resort, this paradigm may push populations to remain in locations threatened by increased natural hazards – while adaptation remained in any case deeply underfinanced.

At COP13 in 2007, States adopted the Bali Action Plan, recognizing that adaptation efforts should accompany mitigation ones and that both “pillars” are equally important to address ongoing climate change. Yet, migration was not considered as part of adaptation and remains excluded from climate policies – a mere reference by COP16 will probably not suffice to integrate migration strategies in adaptation plans. Now, the position of the IOM is promising, as the Report argues that, “while migration can be a manifestation of acute vulnerability, it can also represent a logical and legitimate livelihood diversification and adaptation strategy.” Going even further, the IOM highlights that “[m]igration as an adaptation strategy has already been used for millennia and is likely to be of growing importance in the future.” Thus, the IOM suggests that “orderly and managed population movements can result in a win-win solution for migrants and the countries of origin and destination.” To achieve sustainable development, the IOM suggests a five-step migration management cycle: after efforts to prevent migration or, when necessary, prepare to it “in order to minimize human suffering and the lost of livelihoods,” it advises States to commit in policies to manage migration, mitigate its impact at the place of destination and address it in view of finding a “durable solution.”

Nonetheless, besides this fair understanding of climate migration as a potentially successful adaptation strategy rather than always a failure thereof, it is unfortunate to realize that the IOM defines “migration” very narrowly in this Report. Temporary and internal migrations carried out only in reaction to an occurred natural disaster will necessarily be insufficient to respond to ongoing and irreversible phenomena like sea level rise, land degradation and worsening of extreme climate events. Accordingly, the approach adopted by the Report is insufficient for three reasons. First of all, addressing climate migration only in relation with disaster risk management and reduction seems to exclude any proactive policy attempting to promote early relocation from areas which, due to slow processes, are becoming highly vulnerable to extreme climate events. Scientific risk assessment would often allow early action and early, life saving decisions.

Secondly, the report focuses on internal displacements and only accessorily touches international ones. This fairly reflects a reality: most climate migrants stay in their own State, for lack of means and probably of will to go far. But this approach eludes thorny issues relating to trans-border climate migrations. Internal climate migrants are protected by the 1998 Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement (even though those are only soft law adopted by the UN Commission on Human Rights) and remain under the jurisdiction of their own State. Some climate migrants however need to leave the sphere of relative protection offered by their own State and to cross a border. In some highly densely populated countries like Bangladesh, it may be impossible to relocate internally the high number of persons negatively impacted by climate change. Similarly, entire territories of low lying small Island States such as the Maldives and Tuvalu may be affected, forcing its inhabitants to international migration. In a speech on “Protection Gaps and Responses” on December 8, 2010, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterre emphasized that, “through its acceleration of drought, desertification, the salinisation of ground water and soil, and rising sea levels, climate change […] can contribute to the displacement of people across international frontiers.” As Mr. Guterre noted, no international legal protection applies to international climate migrants. Due to this legal emptiness, climate forced migrants will be forced to migrate illegally and, once arrived in a destination country, will certainly be denied the respect of their most fundamental rights. If no action is taken, even documented climate migrants may be victims of widespread discriminations and they will suffer from not speaking the same language or not having the same culture.

Thirdly, one can hardly agree with the Report’s assertion that “[l]ooking for a durable solution in most cases of displacements induced by natural disasters or environmental degradation means ensuring sustainable return.” All scientific evidence shows that sea level will continue to rise for decades and extreme events such as droughts, hurricanes and storm surges will be more severe and more frequent. Thus, “sustainable reintegration at the place of origin” may actually amount to turning climate migrants back to a dangerous place after media have left. How could a population be turned back to a territory that they left because of a natural disaster, if worse natural disasters are expected to happen there again, threatening once again those who survived the first disaster? Unlike displacements caused by punctual and exceptional environmental phenomenon (eg. seisms, volcanic eruptions), climate migrations are most often permanent in nature. In addition, the responsibility of developed countries at the origin of climate change should push them to offer climate victims the right to participate in generous relocation programs where their rights and dignity will be adequately protected, rather than forcing them to remain in increasingly affected territories.

Eventually, throughout the Report, one may wonder whether the IOM has adopted the right priorities of action in addressing climate migration. Preventing migration or displacement through enhanced climate resilience or in situ adaptation is an objective which must be pursued whenever achievable; but this may be the role of the UNFCCC, the Global Environmental Facility and the UNDP, together with regional organizations and States, rather than the IOM’s. Responding to humanitarian emergency is certainly part of the IOM’s mandate as defined in its Constitution, but other UN institutions are also in charge, under the coordination of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. The IOM should play a role in protecting internal climate migrants since the UNHCR has adopted a narrow definition of internally displaced persons. Nonetheless, the IOM’s priority while addressing climate migrations should be the protection of international climate migrants. Those are in greater need for assistance by an international organization due to their lack of status. The IOM may find a great role in raising awareness on the opportunity of negotiated and controlled solutions as opposed to forced illegal climate migration flows, and in encouraging and facilitating negotiations between States on international relocation programs as an alternative to counterproductive border fencing policies. Eventually, it might want to advocate, along with G77 and nescient NGO community and now the UNHCR, for an international protection of climate migrants.

By Benoît Mayer, benutko@gmail.com

Soure: McGill

IOM has also released an associated background paper on Climate Change and International Migration. It is one of 19 background papers which have been prepared for the World Migration Report.

This year, the World Youth Report 2010 focuses on youth and climate change, and is intended to highlight the important role young people play in addressing climate change. It features a chapter on migration and is worth having a look.

Dr. Jane McAdam has published an article in the forthcoming (2011) 23(1) International Journal of Refugee Law entitled “Swimming Against the Tide: Why a Climate Change Displacement Treaty is Not the Answer”. Drawing on field work in Tuvalu, Kiribati and Bangladesh, Dr Jane McAdam will argue that advocacy for a new treaty addressing climate-related movement is misplaced for a number of reasons. Click here for the abstract and to read the entire article. Jane McAdam has also written an article for the Syndey Morning Herald titled “Number of climate refugees overstated”.

Finally, Reuters AlertNet has published a news article “Destitute climate migrants seen heaping pressure on neighbours”.

Below are some pictures from COP16 including the side event “Climate Change, Environment and Migration Alliance (CCEMA): understanding impacts and finding solutions”. This event was well attended, and covered issues such as migration as adaptation and rapid urbanization due to environmental migration.

As author Sudhit Chella Rajan explains, “one of the main consequences of climate change will be rising seas, which will cause tens to hundreds of millions of people to be flooded out of their homes in coastal areas and in many low-lying atoll nations, some of which will become untenable as states or entirely disappear. This paper discusses disproportionate accumulation, delayed effects and asymmetrical impacts of greenhouse gases to advance ethical arguments concerning why and how the global community of nations should address the injustices caused by historic and continuing actions on climate migrants and climate exiles.”

Author Etienne Piguet

Etienne Piguet, a professor at Universite de Neuchatel in Switzerland, published a paper in the Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change, Volume 1, Issue 4. In it, he claims that although many agree that climate change will induce migration, few, if any at all, can prove to what degree. He lays out a typology identifying six research method families: ecological inference based on area characteristics, individual sample surveys, time series, multilevel analysis, agent-based modeling (ABM), and qualitative/ethnographic studies. He also calls for a coordinated international effort to improve the quality and variety of data that could be used with existing research methods in order to significantly improve our understanding of the migration-environment nexus.

Read the paper in its entirety here.

As always, caveats abound. The social consequences of global warming are always the hardest things to predict. Immigration rates are never driven by physics alone, but depend on plenty of other factors, such as U.S. border policies or the changing structure of Mexico’s economy. And it’s always difficult to tie specific social trends to climate change. People in rural areas have been migrating for a long time, whether to seek out work or because the rainfall’s dried up or the soil’s eroded. Global warming will exacerbate these pressures, yes, but it’s hard to attribute any single event—or single migrant—to man-made climate change. That’s one reason why forecasts of “climate refugees” vary so wildly.

Still, climate-driven migration is a concept that’s received a lot of attention in recent years. As the planet heats up, droughts spread, and sea levels rise, millions of people are going to be uprooted from their homes and farms and move elsewhere. According to a 2007 World Bank report, the vast bulk of this migration is expected to take place within developing countries, with people moving from rural villages to urban centers. One big concern here is that places like Lagos or Dhaka are already swelling exponentially, and their infrastructure can barely keep up, which is why so many “megacities” now sport massive slums.

But there’s also likely to be a fair amount of migration between countries—and the consequences there are much harder to predict. As the rising oceans chomp away at Bangladesh, for instance, as many as 15 million people may have to abandon their towns and villages by mid-century. Partly in response, India has been constructing a 2,100-mile long fence to barricade itself against the predicted influx of climate refugees. This old Greenwire piece by Lisa Friedman features a number of national security experts in India openly fretting about how rising seas will destabilize the borders between the two countries.

There are even consequences for Western politics. Over in Europe, a variety of ultra-right-wing nativist groups take these climate-migration forecasts very seriously. In his excellent book Forecast, Stephan Faris talked to members of Britain’s BNP, which is trying (unsuccessfully) to forge an alliance with greens. A lot of them rant on about how immigration is terrible for the environment, since a person’s carbon footprint swells when he or she moves from a poor country to a rich country. Similarly, in France, Jean-Marie Le Pen’s National Front has started hitting on environmental themes of late. Few actual environmentalists want anything to do with these parties, and there doesn’t seem to be anything comparable in the United States, though if global warming does put pressure on immigration, it’s certainly possible that green nativists could find a toehold here.

Source: The New Republic

“Human movement caused by environmental factors is not new. Natural and human-induced environmental disasters and slow-onset degradation have displaced people in the past, and will continue to do so in the future. Such movement is a normal part of adaptation to change. The ‘newness’ of displacement triggered (at least in part) by climate change is its underlying anthropogenic basis, the large number of people thought to be susceptible to it, and the relative speed with which climate change is to occur, which may hamper people’s traditional adaptive patterns that historically were able to develop over time. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, it is becoming difficult to categorize displaced people because of the combined impacts of conflict, the environment and economic pressures. While the term ‘refugee’ describes only a narrow sub-class of the world’s forced migrants, it is often misapplied to those who move (or who are anticipated to move) for environmental or climate reasons. As explored below, this is not only erroneous as a matter of law, but is conceptually inaccurate as well. In contexts such as the so-called ‘sinking islands’ of Kiribati and Tuvalu in the South Pacific, movement is less likely to be in the nature of sudden flight, and more likely to be pre-emptive and planned. This does not mean it is not ‘forced’, but rather that top-down policy responses and normative frameworks that predicate forced migration on a particular notion of exodus may not match up to realities of movement. Furthermore, while ‘development-induced displacement’ and ‘conflict-induced displacement’ describe primary motivations for movement in certain contexts, field research in Tuvalu and Kiribati highlights the difficulties of describing human movement from these States as exclusively ‘climate-induced displacement’…” To read more, go here.

Original article by Kayly Ober

In 2006, Chinese premier Wen Jiabao pledged $275 million in loans to Pacific nations – a decision, he said, that was “without any strings attached.” But China’s interest in the region extends to far more than being friendly with other developing countries. China knows that Pacific islands are increasingly important players on the international stage. In particular, four key characteristics make them attractive to growing global powers, like China, jockeying for influence: “geostrategic importance; natural resources; critical trade routes; and disproportionate influence in international fora,” explains Cleo Paskal in her new book Global Warring: How Environmental, Economic, and Political Crises Will Redraw the World Map. She makes the intriguing case that concerns over finding islanders a new home in the face of climate change should come from realist self-interests: namely, security and economics.

From a geostrategic standpoint, it’s obvious that the area has vast security implications. While China builds up naval bases and communication – namely, satellite – capacities on Pacific islands, traditional powers like the U.S. shy away. China now has a backyard of friendly island stepping-stones in which to reach Southeast and Central Asia and even possibly a lax U.S. west coast. As Robert Kaplan, a correspondent for The Atlantic and a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, puts it: “The American military contest with China in the Pacific will define the twenty-first century.” Therefore, international support and recognition would keep Pacific islands from falling too deeply into the fold of Chinese influence.

Paskal argues that “control over the Pacific also means control over trade routes,” as well as access to the potential treasure trove of minerals in underwater seabeds — where cadmium and titanium have already been found. Waters around Pacific islands are also known as fishing hotspots, which could become particularly advantageous as the Atlantic’s fish stocks continue to plummet and acidifying oceans threaten global supplies.

What does all this mean? In sum, Pacific islands should use their strategic location and natural resources as bargaining chips in the fight towards recognition and relocation. They could offer the afore-mentioned benefits to those countries that are willing to take in their climate-induced migrants. Thus, climate-induced migrants become value-generating citizens and not burden-inducing immigrants.

An Exercise in What-Ifs

Cleo Paskal asks: “If Tuvalu and other states physically disappear, do they cease to exist as a legal country? Do they lose their seat at the UN? Does their territory become international waters? Or do vast swaths of ocean end up being administered by a population that doesn’t live there? If so, do their descendents have a right to return if, eventually, the islands reappear?” Valid questions when determining a legitimate and sustainable legal framework towards recognizing climate-induced migrants.

She argues that retaining some sort of sovereignty would be essential, as it would give climate-induced migrants “badly needed revenue through access to resource rights (fishing, undersea mining, offshore oil and gas, etc), a voice in international fora, and possibly the right to return if the seas eventually recede.”

She offers solutions in retaining sovereignty under the umbrella of Article 1 of the Montevideo Convention on Rights and Duties of States, which says that in order for a physical location to be deemed a state it must have a government; defined territory, a permanent population; and a capacity to enter into relations with other states.

In regards to building government for a now non-existent country, Paskal believes that a system could be developed to manage the resources of the sunken country for the benefit of its citizens in exile. They could “run the country like a company, with each citizen holding a voting share and distributing annual dividends on the proceeds from the lease of fishing and other rights.” Some examples of territories already adhering to a similar system are the North American First Nations and the Tibetan government in exile – which does a particularly good job of creating a global network with representatives from Tibetan communities in exile and also has a taxation system in place.

In order to keep a defined territory and a permanent population, Pacific nations could theoretically “tether a ship to…old islands (or dump enough sea breaks to form a new island on top of the old island), keep a few people resident there to maintain a permanent population, and then administer the territory through a government in exile in another country.” Actions get a little murkier when we take into account that sea law dictates that artificial islands only get a 1,640-foot safety zone, and not the bountiful 200-nautical-mile exclusive economic zone “real” coastlines get, thus limiting access to resources.

But, says Paskal, “at least the artificial island option might preserve the necessary territory and permanent population to claim sovereign status – sovereignty itself could be a commodity, by becoming tax havens or ship registries, and selling passports, stamps, or even domain name suffixes.”

Putting Theory into Play: Maldives and India

Paskal uses the example of the Maldives and India to illustrate her point.

“The Maldives, a group of low-lying coral atolls in the Indian Ocean off the southwest coast of India with a population of around 330,000, could enter into an arrangement with India before inundation. Indian could agree to take in the environmental refugees; settle them, at least initially, and provide them with appropriate Dhivehi-language schools; grant settlers some sort of Indo-Maldivian citizenship; give the Indo-Maldivians the exclusive or major share in the exploitation of the resources in the ocean area that used to be their home; and possibly even allow them a right to return if the island re-emerge.

In exchange, India would get a strategically useful, vastly increased maritime zone that it agrees to protect in international fora against challenges.”

Realist leanings would suggest that this would be the best course of action for the state and for climate-induced migrants.

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.