Towards Recognition - Raising awareness of environmental migrants » Media

Video: Foresight Report on Migration and Global Environmental Change

Kayly Ober — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 16:32:28 +0000

Did you miss the momentous report on “Migration and Global Environmental Change” released by the UK’s Government Office for Science’s Foresight Programme? Have you been living under a rock? No worries. You can read a short summary by the UK’s Government Chief Scientific Adviser John Beddington, or you can catch the video below.

New Podcasts

Kayly Ober — Tue, 24 May 2011 18:09:35 +0000

Again, thanks to Forced Migration Current Awareness, we learned of a series of podcasts that deal with environmentally-induced migration :

Stephen Castles Speaks on Climate Refugees (BBC, May 2011) [access]

“Environmental Refugee” Not Accurate for Pacific (Radio Australia, May 2011) [access]

Tuvaluans Don’t Want to be Called Refugees (Radio Australia, May 2011) [access]

Many thanks, fm-cab!

Online Discussion Panel from the Environmental Justice Foundation

Dan DaSilva — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 17:01:28 +0000

I have posted before about the Environmental Justice Foundation which is a UK-based NGO working internationally to protect the natural environment and human rights. Their “Climate Refugees: No Place Like Home” campaign is dedicated to arguing the case of those displaced by climate climate change, putting the call to governments and our political leaders for a new agreement on environmental migrants.

Together with the Hay Festival Maldives, EJF has developed a collection of ideas from Heads of State, philosophers, explorers, scientists, lawyers, actors and experts in their field. These filmed discussions consider the potential cultural, emotional and physical impacts of forced migration, who should be responsible and what the potential options are for dealing with the impending human rights crisis (ejfoundation.org).

Click here to see the online discussion panel »

Film: The Uprooted People

Dan DaSilva — Thu, 07 Oct 2010 20:17:59 +0000

Below is a documentary film entitled “The Uprooted People” which was recently uploaded to YouTube by the Local Environment Development and Agricultural Research Society (LEDARS) of Bangladesh. LEDARS is a Bangladeshi NGO working in the southwest of the country, where its main focus is climate change and adaptation, human rights, gender equity, water and sanitation and economic empowerment.

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

Five-part multimedia series investigates Dhaka, Bangladesh

Dan DaSilva — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 18:50:10 +0000

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.

Video: Diffa – Pastoral Nomads in Niger

Kayly Ober — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 19:55:51 +0000

The International Institute for Environment and Development produced a movie on pastoral nomads in Niger and the increasing pressures they face as their traditional pastures dry up. The description of the movie is below.

Diffa is a hot and arid region. Neighbouring Lake Chad has dried up over recent decades to a small fraction of its former size, due to less rainfall and water being diverted to irrigate fields of cotton. This has left destitute thousands of people reliant on the capture and smoking of fish around its margins. For some herders, however, the retreat of the lake’s shoreline has brought positive benefits, since what had formerly been underwater is now covered in thick pasture.

The highly mobile camel herders of the region do well on this grazing, and on the shrubs and bushes that are becoming established in the old lake bed. Mobile phones have given them access to market prices and informed them of where to find good water supplies across the region, while having part of their family settled in town gives them access to new knowledge and opportunities.

For others, the repeated droughts of recent decades have brought deeper poverty and they face great difficulty in getting back on their feet as viable herders. With the loss of their cattle, many have been forced to settle, with just a few head of sheep and goats. Mobility is essential to keeping a family’s livestock assets in good condition, and able to make best use of the patchy vegetation and water offered by this region.

So the outlook is poor for them, particularly given the projected changes in climate. These indicate that the region is set to get hotter as a result of global warming and, while it’s uncertain whether rainfall will increase or decline, it is likely to come in more intense storms. With dry spells becoming more intense, pastoral herders are going to need their mobility more than ever to ensure they can take advantage of good grazing wherever it occurs.

Source: International Institute for Environment and Development

Video: “Hot Cities” Documentary Series by BBC World News

Dan DaSilva — Mon, 03 May 2010 20:09:35 +0000

“Hot Cities” is a powerful and informative documentary series that was aired last fall on BBC World News TV. This is an excellent eight-part series about the present effects of climate change on cities around the world.

Three of the episodes center around the issue of human mobility as a result of climate change at some depth, often following the lives of those who chose to abandon their farming livelihoods and move to nearby mega cities in search of a better life.

I have embedded the first episode “Bursting at the Seams”, which examines Lagos – one of the fastest growing cities in the world. The other two are “Water, water, everywhere…” which explores the capital city of Dhaka in Bangladesh, and “Feed the World” which follows migrants from their drought stricken villages to the city of Dakar in Senegal. Each episode is about 45 minutes long. Click here to check out the other episodes in the series.

Source: BBC World News/rockhopper.tv

Slideshow: Eyewitness Stories from the Sundarbans

Dan DaSilva — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 18:44:45 +0000

Photo credit: Mikkel Stenbæk Hansen

The European Environmental Agency has put up a small slide show of photos of people from the Sundarbans affected by both the sudden and creeping effects of climate change. The Sundarbans is located across areas of Bangladesh and West Bengal, India. This slide show is part of their ‘Signals’ report which they publish at the start of each year. It provides snapshot stories on issues of interest both to the environmental policy debate and the wider public for the upcoming year.

See the slideshow »

6 billion Others – Climate Voices

Dan DaSilva — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 20:35:32 +0000

I haven’t come across much lately in terms of general reports and news related to climate change and human mobility. However as you can see in the past few posts, there have been some excellent thematic film projects and short videos from around the world that have emerged which highlight this humanitarian issue.

The film “Climate Voices” is an extension of the 6 billion Others project by Yann Arthus-Bertrand, director of Home. The film project not only features testimonials from people around the world who have witnessed change in their daily life because of global warming, but also by the scientific community. 600 people were interviewed in 17 countries. It was shown last December at the UN Climate Change Conference.

Segments of the 1 hour and 18 minute film are being uploaded to their YouTube Channel. Below is a 2 minute short where François Gemenne, researcher at the IDDRI, explains some of the psychological, social and cultural consequences of climate change. He says: “One must not forget that it is not just a territory that disappears, not just houses and the living environment, its also cultures, languages and sometimes even nationalities that disappear”. I can also reccommend this segment where climate witnesses and researchers talk about the consequences of displacment due to climate change.

Video Report: In Low-Lying Bangladesh, The Sea Takes a Human Toll

Dan DaSilva — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 17:34:13 +0000

(Yale Environment 360) January 27, 2010 – Danish photographer and filmmaker Jonathan Berg Moller recently spent nine months in Bangladesh, chronicling the lives of people struggling to survive just a few feet above sea level. He traveled to the South Asian nation after hearing projections from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change about the millions of climate refugees that would be created this century by rising seas and more powerful storms. Moller wanted to put a human face on this issue, and decided there was no better place than Bangladesh, where 15 million of its 160 million people live less than three feet above sea level.

While he was in Bangladesh, Cyclone Aila struck, killing roughly 200 people and leaving thousands homeless. Moller proceeded to document the devastation from that 2009 storm, as well the impact of subsiding land and rising seas on other Bangladeshis, many of whom earn less than $1 a day. In this Yale Environment 360 report, we present two videos by Moller – “Aila’s Victims” and “Wahidul’s Story.”

Moller says he will leave it up to scientists to determine how much of the suffering he portrays is related to a warming climate. “I am not a scientist and I know that global warming is a contentious issue,” he says. “I wanted to focus on the people who are suffering today. The point is that these people are vulnerable today, and will become even more vulnerable in the future.”

A Bangladeshi man who is the subject of one of his videos, Wahidul, lives in the town of Kuziartek, which was once home to 40,000 people. Now, the island on which Kuziartek was located is underwater. All that is left of Kuziartek is a small embankment rising from the sea, 2 ½ miles out in the Bay of Bengal. Seven families remain there, including Wahidul’s, clinging to a disappearing strip of earth.

“But what can we do,” asks Wahidul, fearful that abandoning his village would leave him homeless in a city slum. “We have an unfortunate fate. There are many people in the world, but I doubt that anyone must suffer as much as me. People shouldn’t live where we live, but we have no choice. We have to live here.”

Click here to view the video report »

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Reprinted from Yale Environment 360