“I think it’s appropriate to think about [climate change] adaptation or investments in adaptation as investments to open up the range of choices available to people to deal with an uncertain future,” said Jon Barnett, associate professor of geography at the University of Melbourne, in an interview with ECSP. “In some circumstances it might be appropriate to build infrastructure and hard options where we’re very certain about the nature of the risk…but in other cases, expanding the range of choices and freedoms and opportunities that people have to deal with climate change in the future is perhaps the better strategy.”

A precise correlation is difficult to draw. But by 2050, climate impacts—flooding, erosion, and extreme weather events—are expected to displace between 50 million and one billion people.

The international community has rightly increased its attention on the issue. Some experts argue that migration is simply a failure to adapt to climate change. Strategies should focus on helping people adapt “in situ,” or find sustainable ways to remain where they are.

In many cases, this is an appropriate response, but that’s not always possible. What happens when staying put threatens survival?

If our nomadic forbears have taught us anything, it is that remaining in one place is not always a good idea. There has been far less discussion on what we call “climate immobility,” how populations affected by climate change may not have the means (or the ability) to move to less vulnerable places—even when their survival depends on it.

Migration has its prerequisites—adequate funds, contacts in the destination area, and the ability to avoid prohibitions on movement.  Those who don’t meet these requirements are the involuntarily immobile. When you add rapid climate change to the picture, the need for mobility increases, and the inability to move could be catastrophic.

South-central Somalia is a dramatic example of a place where people, suffering from drought and famine, need to move for food and shelter but simply can’t. For years, the insurgent group al-Shabab has forcibly restricted the flow of aid and people, keeping the international community out and preventing the development of vital disaster relief and preparedness.

Somalia’s isolation brought a form of institutionalized immobility for its people. The impact of climate change on such an extremely vulnerable situation will be disastrous. While equally fragile places like Sudan and Afghanistan still offer—intentionally or not—channels for mobility, the further destabilizing effects of climate change could shut those doors.

There are also cases where traditionally nomadic movements are forcibly curtailed. In northern and western China, current government policies center on “ecological resettlement,”—a policy that isolates minority herders in designated villages as a means to ‘save the environment’, but also to enhance social control.

Ironically, with climate change looming, this policy of institutionalized immobility may both reduce the adaptive capacity of people in the region and put an end to customary livelihoods. Similar restrictions on nomadic movements in the Sahel, and strict prohibitions on “exit” enforced by closed regimes like North Korea, Burma, and Zimbabwe, leave a number of involuntarily immobile populations at risk.

Population immobility can occur anywhere, from countries with highly restrictive regimes to those with barely a government at all. In any of these cases, the future effects of climate change will likely worsen an already fragile situation.

Though the international community has understandably focused on climate migration, more attention needs to shift to involuntary immobility in the face of climate change. A significant number of people are and will likely become immobile. Policy-makers will then need to find solutions that reduce the vulnerabilities associated with this—both through in situ climate adaptation plans and strategies that recognize the need to move, and move safely.

To stay or go is a false dichotomy—climate change policies must accommodate real-life complexity, and case-by-case solutions. As ecological barriers shift, so, too, do human forces. The concern now is to find a way to integrate dynamic ecological and relatively static political boundaries with human lives and desires.

To address climate migration, we need to also take into account its poorer twin, climate immobility.

Source: World Policy Blog

The interview can be accessed here.

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!

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 »

This question has been at the forefront of my mind since the earthquake ravaged Haiti on January 12. Simply having the chance to leave Haiti has lifted more Haitians out of extreme poverty than all of the billions of dollars in aid, all of the foreign investment, and all of the trade preferences that Haiti has received from the United States during the past thirty years. (The research underlying that statement can be found in this CGD paper. I further describe the dynamic impact of mobility, particularly for Haitians, in these Washington Post and Foreign Policy articles.) It doesn’t make sense to me that allowing some flexibility in human mobility—one of the most effective, lowest-cost ways to help Haitians—has been playing such a tiny role in international efforts to help Haitians.

While the U.S. has worked expeditiously to assist Haiti’s people and government to rebuild and recover from this catastrophe, we lack a systematic mechanism for leveraging human mobility—one of the most powerful ways that people in poor countries cope with and overcome shocks. Because natural disaster victims are not fleeing group-based violent persecution, they do not qualify as refugees under international law. Thus, I contend that the U.S. and other rich countries must either create a new category of entrants or find some means of handling a finite number of natural disaster victims through existing policy or administrative channels.

Note well: Creating a category of entry does not mean allowing unlimited numbers. A category of entry now exists for refugees fleeing violent persecution, for example, but this doesn’t mean that anyone fleeing violent persecution can come. Each year the U.S. and other rich-country governments decide how many people to admit in that category in accordance with national goals and ability to help.

I was thrilled by the quality of conversation among the roundtable participants, which included representatives from the refugee advocacy community and other research institutes. The group discussed the complexities of existing migration and refugee policies, while raising important questions about the purpose and implementation of a new program. Specifically:

• What criteria should determine what individuals and/or countries are eligible?
• Should victims of natural disasters be eligible temporary refuge or should they be offered a path to long-term residency or citizenship?
• Would such a program require legislative action or are there existing tools that could be used to accomplish similar goals through administrative channels? (The United States previously brought hundreds of thousands of Indochinese, Cuban, and Kosovo refugees, among others, into the country when it was deemed it to be in the interests of national security.)
• How do we differentiate between forced and voluntary migration following a natural disaster?

CGD plans to commission new research to explore these questions and others, as well as current systems and new possibilities. Building on the findings of this paper, I plan to launch a new CGD initiative to move forward toward a viable policy solution.

Source: Center for Global Development

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

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