Nicole Marshall, a professor at the University of Alberta, argues for environmental migrants’ rights from a philosophical standpoint, as developed in her working paper. She bases her argument off of “moral imperative” (p. 7) and, more specifically, on Kant’s “principle of hospitality.” Theoretically, a person displaced by environmental factors could be defined as a temporary visitor while in another state and should, therefore, be granted the right of entry into another country because hospitality “is not a question of philanthropy, but of a right” (p. 9). Kant, she claims, also gives us a basis on which to navigate the space between civil rights, as traditionally defined by state-citizen relationships, and human rights; which, ultimately, is the gray area where environmental migrants lie.

Marshall also draws on Joseph Carens’ work on immigration rights using the Rawls’ principles of justice. Carens argues that arbitrary factors are essentially unjust (p. 10) – i.e. where you are born determines your future prospects in life – and need to be rectified in a tangible way – i.e. open borders allow you to move to wherever you decide you have the best future prospects. Since “most environmentally devastating events are arbitrary in location, scope, and impact;” those most egregiously affected by them should be able to move wherever they believe will be without risk and where they can lead a sustained “good” life.

While Marshall makes a case for global moral responsibility and who should take the brunt of it (hint: developed countries who contribute more to climate change and its consequently negative effects), she doesn’t make a particularly convincing case for policy makers or pragmatists, in general, to follow. It is one thing to say the world has a moral responsibility to protect environmental migrants; it is another thing to act upon it.

However, she does offer up one compelling idea: the breakdown of environmental migrants into distinct categories. The four categories she offers are:

• Imperative Environmental Migrants: persons who have been permanently and irrefutably displaced from their homes and/or livelihoods primarily as a result of environmental factors. Ex. Tuvalu, the Maldives, Bangladesh.
• Pressured Environmental Migrants: persons whose traditional habitats and lifestyles are increasingly less viable because of slow-moving, but devastating processes like desertification. Ex. Tunisia, China, Morocco.
• Temporary Environmental Migrants: persons who experience a short-term forced migration resulting from a one-time severe environmental event. Ex. Survivors of Hurricane Katrina or the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami.
• Human Environmental Migrants: persons who are displaced from their home or livelihood as a result of human conflict over limited environmental resources. Ex. Sierra Leone, DR Congo, Angola.

Although some of the categories may be a little alarmist (and many “human environmental migrants” are already categorized as IDPs in their respective countries), the proposal to break down environmental migration definitions is a step in the right direction towards recognition. Some countries may be more apt to accept “temporary environmental migrants” over “pressured environmental migrants.” In fact, the definition of refugee or internally displaced persons is a major source of contention. Let us hope that we can continue the conversation, and eventually steer it towards action.

This is an original article by Towards Recognition contributor Kayly Ober.

The Center for American Progress in Washington, DC is hosting an event entitled “The Global Implications of Climate Migration” on March 1, 2010, 10:00am – 11:30am. Speakers will discuss the intersection of climate change, development, and human migration. Here is the brief summary about the event from thier website:

It is inevitable that as global warming intensifies hurricanes, exacerbates drought, and adds to resource shortages, we will need to prepare for extreme conditions and responses, and this includes human migration. Some estimates suggest that as many as 200 million people could become climate migrants by 2050. The panelists will therefore discuss the implications of climate migration with regard to adaptation strategies, frameworks for addressing internal and international movements, and new, comprehensive strategies to deal with unique challenges.

The featured speakers include:

Neil Levine, Director, Office of Conflict Management and Mitigation, USAID
Susan Martin, Herzberg Professor of International Migration, School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University
David Waskow, Climate Change Program Director, Oxfam America

Moderated by:
Michael Werz, Senior Fellow, Center for American Progress

Click here for more information and to watch the live webcast on the day of the event.

In the past two installments of the children and climate change series, the dangers of climate change were discussed especially with regards to forced migration. Disease, the breakdown of the family roles, and the loss of childhood were all explored in depth and the recognition that all the Convention on the Rights on the Child be upheld to its fullest. UNICEF UK takes us one step further by stressing the need for “engaging children as actors in the climate change agenda rather than treating them as passive observers or victims”. This means not only giving them the voice needed to express how climate change is affecting them, but giving them a voice to bring about meaningful change in the climate change agenda that is occurring now.

For its part, UNICEF has pledged to continue its Millennium Development Goals as well as to build on its ‘’water and sanitation programme [as well as] …providing mosquito nets… water, schools, health clinics, and support for rural communities whose livelihoods are becoming more challenging due to climate change’’. Including children in all aspects of these programs from education to implementation will mean children can move from victim to agent of change. Given the nature of climate change-that it will affect all- means all of us including children should play a part in mitigating the effects.

Residents of Dhaka's Korail slum are seeing a construction boom as new huts go up to accommodate a growing flood of climate refugees. Photo credit: Syful Islam

(Reuters AlertNet) Febraury 12, 2010 - DHAKA, Bangladesh - A building boom in rickety new huts is underway in Korail slum, the biggest temporary residence of landless people in Bangladesh’s capital.

A growing flood of landless poor, many displaced by climate-related problems, are moving into the canal-side slum, which lies adjacent to Gulshan, one of Dhaka’s poshest areas.

Everywhere, people are busy building new makeshift rooms - in some cases multi-story shanties of bamboo and wood - to accommodate the arrivals.

Bangladeshi researchers estimate that about half a million people each year are pouring to the capital city after losing their homes and livelihoods to problems linked to climate change, including land erosion, worsening storms and sea level rise.

At present around 10,000 people live crammed into each square kilometer in Dhaka, where finding open land has become very difficult. The city, built for a million people in the 1960s, now accommodates more than 12 million and is one of the most densely populated on earth.

Bangladesh is ranked by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as one of the countries most at risk from climate change. Models suggest the low-lying nation of 156 million people could lose 17 percent of its land to rising seas, displacing 15 million people by 2050.

FEW RESOURCES TO SPARE

Providing for the needs of ever-increasing numbers of climate migrants is proving difficult in a country with few resources to help them.

Dhaka already suffers widespread poverty and unemployment, and offers limited opportunities for new migrants. The country has no social safety net to assist those who cannot find work for themselves, and competition for jobs is increasing with each new arrival.

Most of the people living in Korail are beggars, day labourers, boatman, rickshaw pullers or roadside hawkers, said Abul Miah, 40, who lives with his family of four in a 10-foot by 10-foot hut.

“I could not afford schooling of my children, so they are working in garment factory and roadside shop to help me,” he said of his adult son and younger daughter.

Osman Mia, 70, formerly of Bangladesh’s southern Borguna district, became landless when the Payra River in southern Bangladesh claimed his property. He now earns a living by pulling a rickshaw in Dhaka’s bustling streets.

The Korail slum, with its bamboo and tin shacks, has no permanent toilet facilities, so residents construct hanging toilets over the adjacent canal, polluting its water.

MUD STOVES, NO WATER

The slum also has no piped water from the Dhaka Water Supply Authority. In exchange for monthly payments, some musclemen supply water through illegal pipelines in exchange of monthly payments.

Inhabitants cook on stoves made of mud, burning huge amounts of wood and bamboo since there is no gas supply in the slum, which lies just across the canal from the homes of some of Dhaka’s richest families.

Hasen Molla, 60, is one of the canal’s boatmen. He lost his village home in Chaulakathi, in Bangladesh’s Barishal district after the Kochar River claimed his family’s land.

“My family moved to my granny’s house as we lost all the properties to river erosion. Since then two of my brothers are living there and I left for Dhaka to find my bread and butter,” he said.

Nearly a third of his $65 a month income goes to rent.

“My son and daughters are also working, as I can’t bear all the expenses. There is no scope for anyone here to live without work, no matter if you are adult or not,” he said.

For those without work, the outlook is particularly bleak.

Rohiton Nesa, 60, who has no children and whose husband left her, now begs in the street and at bus stops to pay for food and a place to live. She lost her family home and land in Noakhali district to erosion from the Hatiya river, she said.

The situation is the same in Dhaka’s Mogbazar slum, home to about 10,000 climate migrants living in 1,200 shanties.

Amiron, 65, who like many Bangladeshis goes by one name, lives with her two sons, daughter-in-laws and grandchildren in an 80-square-foot room made of plastic sheets and bamboo. The room has a wooden platform where her children sleep, while she and the grandchildren sleep nearby on the floor.

Mogbazar has some piped-in water. But Amiron feels shy to shower in an open-air bathroom the Dhaka City Corporation has built.

“It’s very tough for women to bath under the open sky,” she said.

Her daughter-in-law Monwara, 22, who lost her own parents to flooding, said starting over in Dhaka’s slums is a huge challenge for families who have lost everything and can afford nothing better than a basic hut.

“We are very poor. We lost all the things to the river. I lost my parents, too,” she said. “We have no way to find a better place as buying food twice a day became a big challenge for us.”

The slum presents other perils as well. Devastating fires regularly break out among the bamboo and wood structures. Hanif Mia, 75, was narrowly saved by his daughter last December when a blaze raged through his slum area, burning nearly all of the huts.

“My leg was broken in mid-November. I had no capacity to move. God saved me from burning as my daughter took me out,” he remembered.

Now, “we built this hut again taking loan at high rate of interest from private lenders. I don’t know if I will be able to repay the loan,” he said.

Source: Reuters AlertNet

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.

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

The film also offers solutions, highlighting the urgency for mitigation and adaptation efforts and creation and implementation of adaptation funds to help these people combat the effects of climate change better.

Source: ExhangesConnect page on Youtube

For readers interested in contributing to help victims of the earthquake in Haiti, here is a great website which lists places to donate online. All links are legit and lead to a page with additional information on donating to the relief fund.

Here are some additional listings of well known humanitarian agencies I often refer to on this blog, that are accepting donations for disaster relief in Haiti:

• United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)

• International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies

• American Red Cross

• Oxfam International

• United Nations Foundation

Applications are required to be submitted online at www.ehs.unu.edu not later than 15 January 2010.

The Summer Academy is designed to bring Ph.D, LLM and SJD students together with senior United Nations University and Munich Re Foundation scientists, international experts, and academic professors to facilitate the mutual exchange of research and scholarship on climate change and social vulnerability. The 2010 program will invite a group of outstanding students from graduate programs around the world to participate with experts in mapping a set of potential policy and institutional frameworks to help address the humanitarian and human rights impacts of forced migration related to climate change.

The week-long program will focus on specific country and regional level challenges related to human migration and displacement, with a view to identifying the gaps in policy, law and institutions needed to protect vulnerable groups.

Further information
For further information please download the Announcement for the Summer Academy 2010 or contact Ms. Xiaomeng Shen (shen@ehs.unu.edu) at UNU-EHS.

Source: Munich Re Foundation

Mahe Noor left her village in southern Bangladesh after Cyclone Sidr flattened her family’s home and small market in 2007. Jobless and homeless, she and her husband, Nizam Hawladar, moved to this crowded megalopolis, hoping that they might soon return home.

Two years later, they are still here. Ms. Noor, 25, and Mr. Hawladar, 35, work long hours at low-paying jobs—she at a garment factory and he at a roadside tea stall. They are unable to save money after paying for food and rent on their dark shanty in Korail, one of the largest slums in Dhaka. And in their village, more people are leaving because of river erosion and dwindling job opportunities.

“We’re trapped,” Ms. Noor said.

In the past, many analysts argued that climate-driven migration would lead to tens of millions of “climate refugees” pouring into wealthy countries. Droughts in North Africa, say, would push people into Europe. (This explains why some European anti-immigration groups have adopted green rhetoric.) But more recent research suggests that most of the migration will take place within developing countries—from rural areas to cities. And the main worry here is that these cities are already swelling exponentially, and their infrastructure can barely keep up, which is why many “megacities” sport massive slums.

Now, the tricky part is tying these trends to climate change. After all, severe storms and droughts are nothing new. Nor is internal migration. People in developing countries have been flocking to cities for a long time, whether it’s to seek out work or because the rainfall’s dried up or because the soil’s eroded away. We can say that global warming will exacerbate these pressures and greatly increase the pace of migration, but it’s hard to attribute any single event—or single migrant—to man-made climate change. (Virtually no scientist will say that Cyclone Sidr was caused by global warming, though many will agree that this type of event will become more frequent as the oceans heat up.)

This seems like hairsplitting, but it could become a major issue. One of the few concrete items that came out of Copenhagen was a pledge by rich countries to set up a $100 billion annual climate fund by 2020 (with smaller amounts of climate aid dribbling in earlier). Some of this money is supposed to help poor countries adapt to a warmer world. But how do you distinguish between people displaced specifically by climate change and those migrating for other reasons? The difficulty in sorting out causes is one reason why forecasts of “climate refugees” vary so wildly, from 200 million by 2050 to one billion by 2050.

So climate-driven migration is a real concern, but it’s worth being precise about the concept. Geoff Dabelko, who directs the Environmental Change and Security Program at the Wilson Center, had a smart post back in 2007 urging environmentalists to be careful when using the term “climate refugee” (the word “refugee” is particularly problematic, since it has a precise legal definition and invokes certain responsibilities by governments). Otherwise, the problem just gets harder to solve.

Source: The New Republic