More interestingly, “in the case of married couples, women do not migrate. This is a case of household, not individual, strategies, in which, due to traditional gender roles, men are the ones who must respond to adverse economic impacts from climate change by migrating.” Although, “single mothers are the women most likely to migrate in response to climate change, since they must generate income to maintain their families. The loss of income from economic depression forces them to migrate in search of work, and the same is true for many young women who provide economic support to their parents.”

From this study, we can see that responses to climate change are very household and community-based. In a livelihoods system like that of Africa, where some 80 percent of agricultural output is led by women, migration might be a much more common response, especially given the migration patterns seen by men/agricultural workers in Mexico. More studies would be needed in each impacted community in order to determine truly the differences in migration for men and women.

For further reference: In 2009, Lori M. Hunter and Emmanuel Davis of the University of Colorado, Boulder wrote a working paper on “Climate Change and Migration: Considering the Gender Dimensions,” where they looked at potential ways in which climate change may differentially shape both migration’s cause and consequence by gender. They used a livelihoods framework, in which they believed there were “two pathways through which climate change’s gendered migration impacts may manifest: 1) shifts in proximate natural resources and agricultural potential, as well as 2) increases in extreme weather events.”

Again, we see that the study of gendered migration is nuanced. Hunter and Davis acknowledge that extreme weather events might impact migration differently for men and women, and not just slow-onset impacts like that of drought, which the Mexico study focuses on.

In sum, there remain more questions than answers. Regardless, both of the studies above should be read and re-read in order to begin to “gain the nuance understanding necessary to inform policy mitigating climate change’s impacts,” as Hunter and Davis write.

“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.”

In this paper and the reports to follow, we will discuss regional case studies in which the cumulative effects of climate change, migration, and conflict interact within a broad framework of political, economic, and environmental security challenges. Our objective is to develop a robust contemporary notion of sustainable security that effectively integrates defense, diplomacy, and development into a comprehensive policy designed to deal with today’s global threats while preventing future threats from occurring.

We delve into these recommendations in detail at the end of this paper but in this section we briefly explain how we believe the international community, the United States, its allies, and key regional players can together create a sustainable security situation to deal with climate change, migration, and conflict. Specifically they must:

• Conduct federal government institutional reform in the United States that addresses the development-security relationship and that prioritizes planning for long-term humanitarian consequences of climate change and migration as a core national security issue
• Develop strategies to strengthen intergovernmental cooperation on transboundary risks in different regions of the world
• Increase funding for the Global Climate Change Initiative
• Ensure better information flows and more effective disaster response for early-warning systems
• Support the best science to expand our understanding of specific circumstances such as desertification, rainfall variability, disaster occurrence, and coastal erosion, and their relation to human migration and conflict
• Identify regions most vulnerable to climate-induced migration, both forced and voluntary, in order to target aid, information, and contingency-planning capabilities
• View migration as a proactive adaptation strategy for local populations under pressure due to increased environmental change

A truly sustainable approach to security, then, requires us not only to look at the traditional security threats posed by the interaction between states, but also to understand that the security of the United States is advanced by promoting the individual well-being of people across the developing world, and by embracing collective responses to shared threats posed by climate change. We turn first to understanding the dynamics of those threats.

Read the report in its entirety here.

You can also watch the complementary video with Koko Warner of the United Nations University, U.K. Climate and Energy Security Envoy Rear Admiral Neal Morisetti, Anne-Marie Slaughter, USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah, and Senior Fellow Michael Werz of the Center for American Progress here:

A brief overview of the effects of climate change and the environment on migration opens the study, but the real meat comes in at page 36 when legal and policy implications are discussed. In sum, they suggest the European Union become a leader in determining solutions.

As at the international level the legal debate is unlikely to be solved in the near term, the EU may decide to be one of the pioneers in this field, in particular because there are already attempts at the political level to consider environmentally displaced individuals under the Common European Asylum Policy. In light of the above, we put forward the following

recommendations to the European Parliament  with the aim of offering different possible mechanisms to be considered by the EU in dealing with environmentally displaced individuals:

• EU may wish to start with the complementary protection regime first, as an ad hoc mechanism and depending on the further evolution to guarantee primary protection to environmental displaced individuals. The national provisions analyzed can be used as a model for the European legislator in amending the content of the Qualification Directive. As long as the reasons listed in the Article 15 shall be applicable to qualify for subsidiary protection, an amendment  to its paragraph (c) might include, in addition to armed conflict, also environmental disasters.
• There are strong arguments that, in the case  of  a  mass  influx  of  environmentally displaced individuals, the  financial and political mechanisms available under the Temporary Protection Directive might be applicable. However, a more flexible and at the same time more objective mechanism  to activate the directive should be considered, as the directive currently can only be activated upon a commission proposal and a related decision by the Council.
• A holistic approach covering all the aspects of environmentally induced migration is a more relevant approach, engaging a comprehensive instrument for environmentally displaced individuals that  would regulate the procedure and method, including the rights and obligations, for granting protection to victims of environmental displacement.
• The EU should consider ad hoc mechanisms informed by a rights-based approach and existing instruments regarding legal and irregular migration (for example prolongation of residence titles for third-country nationals whose countries have been affected by environmental disasters, postponement of removal, etc).
• The EU should promote the resettlement of individuals from countries that have experienced environmental disasters and further develop the Joint EU Resettlement Programme.

Under the Global Approach, third countries affected by climate change related phenomena should be assisted in order to support the national institutions in dealing with adverse environmental change. Measures may comprise strengthening the adaptation and resilience capacities of third countries to reduce the vulnerability of affected populations and enhancing the protection of environmental displaced individuals outside the European Union. The EU should consider providing support to local governments to address migration as an adaptation strategy and to facilitate migration while ensuring that the rights of the migrants are protected during the whole migration cycle. The mobility partnerships would be, in principle, a relevant instrument to bilaterally cooperate on all sorts of measures regarding environmentally displaced.

“This risk, while recognised, has been inadequately dealt with by the international community,” admitted John Crowley, who heads the ethics of science and technology section at UNESCO, the body that currently chairs the Global Migration Group, a U.N. interagency group on migration issues.

Under today’s international law, “climate refugees” as a category are not formally recognised, and as such they have no right to asylum or other assistance. But an agreement at the U.N. climate summit in Cancun last year for the first time urged countries to accept that “climate change-induced displacement, migration and planned relocation” should be considered in plans to adapt to climate change.

That may open the door to migration costs being funded under the emerging Green Climate Fund, which is expected to disperse a promised $100 billion a year, starting in 2020, for climate adaptation and emissions reduction efforts in the world’s most vulnerable nations, said Koko Warner, an expert on environmental migration issues at the U.N. University.

Still, planning for predicted large-scale migration as a result of climate impacts remains preliminary, particularly regarding the politically perilous issue of migration across national borders.

Lack of preparation doesn’t mean migration won’t happen, however, experts warned.

“In some countries, there is no space (to resettle migrants), some countries might even go down under the water (and) in others, population pressure is so high that people cannot move (elsewhere in the country),” noted Qazi Kholiquzzaman Ahmad, a Bangladeshi economist and contributing author to several Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports.

“Therefore, it’s extremely important we find ways of moving them out of the country and into regional countries if possible, or into countries where the number of people is small and there is huge land area,” he said. He admitted that “this is a difficult subject”.

One particular difficulty in dealing with climate-induced migration is that much of it is likely to be gradual. In many cases, it is predicted to be the result of an increasing burden of problems – poor harvests, bad weather, insufficient income – that make it difficult for families to stay in their homes, rather than the result of a single disaster, something international agencies are more practiced at addressing.

“We are good at emergency response but bad on progressive, gradual phenomenon,” UNESCO’s Crowley said. “And climate change will be largely a progressive, gradual phenomenon. There won’t be anything to launch an appeal for, no specific event. There will just be growing pressure to migrate.”

Migration Needs To Be An Option

Keeping families in their homes as long as possible, through measures like promoting crops more tolerant of extreme weather, or better rainwater harvesting techniques, will be vital, the experts said. But there may also be some ways of helping those who have no choice but to leave.

First is to recognise migration as an effective kind of adaptation in some circumstances, rather than a failure of adaptation.

“Migration isn’t necessarily a bad thing. We have to recognise migration as an adaptation strategy, and make it an option available to the most vulnerable,” Crowley said.

But migration also needs to be carefully planned and managed to ensure migrants don’t end up becoming even more vulnerable, by moving to flood-prone urban slums, for instance, or provoking conflict with their new neighbours, he said.

That may require reworking government safety net programmes to direct money to families displaced by climate pressures, or carrying out land reform to effectively settle landless people.

Changing immigration laws will also be important. Australia, for example, has a new visa category to accommodate displaced people from the region, experts said.

But many nations have steadfastly resisted giving environmental migrants refugee status.

“The problem with refugees is they have a claim to asylum. That’s why states are reluctant to expand the (refugee) regime,” Crowley said.

What’s worth remembering, experts say, is that migration usually happens as a last resort, to families who would prefer to remain where they are.

“People want to stay home. They have a profound spiritual tie to their homeland. But if they can’t, we need to make sure they can migrate in safety and dignity,” Warner said.

Source: AlterNet

After assembling on November 15, 2011 the GMG has adopted the following stance on the impact of climate on migration:

The GMG is concerned about the consequences of climate change for human migration and human development. While there is mounting evidence that climate change has the potential to contribute to substantial movements of people, the response of the international community has so far been limited at best.

Climate change and environmental factors are rarely the sole cause of migration. People tend to move for a variety of reasons, including economic and social factors. Moreover, the environment has always been a key factor in migration dynamics, either because of the direct impact of environmental degradation or disasters on human mobility or through its impact on socioeconomic conditions. While the precise effect of climate change on migration is therefore difficult to isolate, let alone to quantify, most observers agree that it will affect the lives and human rights of people, especially women and girls, whether in terms of livelihood, employment, housing, health or sanitation, and that migration and displacement are coping strategies, often of last resort,to adapt to these changes.

The impact of climate change on migration is multifaceted. Sea level rise may degrade living conditions in river deltas and other densely populated low-lying regions in the world and is already causing internal relocation and displacement in some countries. Rising sea levels may lead to significant loss of territory in some small-island States. Climate change is also associated with droughts and desertification, which affect the livelihoods of families, particularly those of subsistence farmers. Finally, climate change can contribute to the increased frequency of extreme weather events and natural disasters, including cyclones, storms and floods.

Climate change impacts mobility patterns in a variety of ways. Sea level rise is likely to make lowlying areas uninhabitable, and permanently displace populations. In contrast, droughts may at first lead to circular or temporary migration, enabling households to diversify sources of income. The majority of those displaced are likely to move short distances and to return as soon as circumstances permit. In some cases however, short-term internal displacements may pave the way and contribute to long-term international movements. Such movements are also likely to fuel urbanization and the challenges associated with it.

Of particular concern is the impact of climate change on migration in developing countries. Least developed countries often lack the resources to adapt to or manage the consequences of human displacement associated with climate change. Moreover, climate change is taking place in a global context marked by inequalities both within and between countries. It disproportionately affects the economically and socially disadvantaged segments of a population, exacerbating vulnerabilities relating to gender, ethnicity, health or socioeconomic status, and can have serious repercussions for the rights and welfare of women, girls, children, youth, the elderly and indigenous people.

Climate change and its consequences may also translate into conflicts over resources that in turn lead to displacement and migration. They may also generate human security concerns, both for those who are displaced and who may encounter new forms of vulnerability, including discrimination, human rights violations or risks related to smuggling of migrants and trafficking in persons, and for the residents of the communities that receive them. Women and girls are disproportionately affected by such risks, particularly as far as human trafficking, sexual exploitation and forced labour are concerned.

Too often, attention is solely focused on the immediate consequences of sudden-onset disasters, such as floods, cyclones or hurricanes. Yet, in the long run, the silent crisis generated by slow-onset environmental degradation will also affect many people.

In view of these challenges, the GMG calls on the international community to recognize that migration and displacement induced by environmental degradation and climate change require urgent action. Specifically, the GMG recommends:

• To adopt gender-sensitive, human rights- and human development-oriented measures to improve the livelihoods of those exposed to the effects of climate change and increase their resilience, in order to counter the need for involuntary movements.
• To pay particular attention to the human rights situation of all people affected by the consequences of climate change, regardless of their legal status: international human rights law, including the fundamental principle of non-discrimination, as well as specific instruments such as the Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement, should guide States’ action towards people who are displaced as a result of environmental factors.
• To explore the complex interrelations between climate change and human mobility in order to collect data, develop expertise and build capacity to address this challenge, and to achieve close cooperation between the climate and social sciences communities to this end.
• To address the migration impacts of both sudden and slow-onset effects of climate change.
• To recognize migration as an adaptation strategy to environmental risks and to make migration an option available to the most vulnerable. Immigration policies could take into account environmental factors in the likelihood of cross-border movement and consider opening new opportunities for legal migration.
• To assist the least-developed countries in responding to climate change by mainstreaming migration and mobility in national adaptation plans.
• To incorporate the relationship between climate change and migration in Poverty Reduction Strategies and national development strategies.

In the long term, States may wish to review existing legal instruments and policy framework to identify possible new solutions to the situation of those who move in relation to climate change. This would address normative gaps, enable a more focused and specific approach and possibly improve the governance of this issue. Yet, the development of a comprehensive normative framework should not hinder the immediate search for workable policy options to face the challenges raised by climate change, migration and displacement.

The GMG recognizes the difficulty of identifying a special category of migrants that could be quantified separately from other categories. In the absence of internationally agreed definitions, it notes the existence of different terms, including ‘environmental migration’, ‘migration related to climate change’ or ‘climate-related mobility’. Irrespective of their different merits and weaknesses, the GMG wishes to discourage the use of labels such as environmental or climate ‘refugee’, because the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees does not as such consider environmental factors as a basis for granting refugee status.

The GMG welcomes the initiatives already taken by the Global Forum on Migration and Development and the Conferences of the Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, including the Cancun Adaptation Framework, adopted in 2010 at COP 16 in Cancun. It also notes the Nansen Principles adopted in 2011 at the Nansen Conference on Climate Change and Displacement in the 21st Century. It encourages these intergovernmental processes to further address the relationships between climate change, migration and displacement. Additionally, it calls on the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (“Rio+20”) that will be held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in June 2012, to incorporate these challenges in its global
commitment to sustainable development.

Long before the Pacific will rise to a level that will leave its estimated 30,000 islands submerged, most of them might be severely affected by frequent flooding and storms.

Thousands of people living on islands scattered across the world’s largest ocean are already fleeing their homes and lands because of altered climate conditions.

Still, “an extraordinarily cold or warm winter in a region or even globally is not proof of climate change,” said Mary-Elena Carr, biological oceanographer at the Earth Institute in New York. Real climate change can only be concluded from shifting weather conditions observed over 20 to 30 years.

Carr, associate director of the Columbia Climate Centre, spoke with IPS U.N. correspondent Rousbeh Legatis about the human impact on rising sea levels, how islanders will be affected and what can be done to mitigate adverse consequences for people in the Pacific.

Excerpts from the interview follow.

Q: Is it still arguable that the increased natural disasters we are seeing are due to climate change?

A: At this point, we cannot attribute any weather event to climate change, anthropogenic or natural. The climate system is extremely complex and there are many factors that determine what we experience from day to day.

While we can assert that climate change due to greenhouse gas emissions will lead to changes in the patterns of rainfall or temperature, we cannot assign a single cause to any specific event like a flood or a hurricane.

Q: From a scientific perspective, who or what is responsible for the rising sea levels and how do human actions contribute to them?

A: Globally rising sea level is a consequence of a warmer planet, which is due to increased amounts of atmospheric greenhouse gases (GHGs). Historically, developed nations are responsible for the current levels of GHGs in the atmosphere. However, rapidly developing nations are increasingly contributing to GHG emissions.

At a local level, land use choices can directly impact the relative height of ocean and land: groundwater extraction, destruction of coral reefs, construction choices, can all lead to local sea level rise.

Q: How do sea levels change and why does this harm human life?

A: Sea level changes when there is a change in either the mass or the volume of water in the ocean. If we imagine the ocean basin like a very large bathtub, you can change the total mass by adding or removing water; in the ocean, that would be through evaporation or precipitation, or when water flows from land to sea, either as rivers or ice.

The mass of seawater in the bathtub can change its location due to currents or winds. The same mass of seawater changes in volume, expanding when it warms or freshens.

Sea level also changes with vertical land motion (if the sides or bottom of the bathtub were to sink or rise). Such motion can occur over very long time scales. Land also undergoes vertical motion over short time scales, due to groundwater extraction or tectonic activity.

While all of these processes have occurred throughout the history of the earth, humans impact sea level rise directly, by manipulating the flow of ground and surface water, and indirectly, through GHG emissions which raise the average global temperature.

This warming affects both the mass and volume of seawater primarily due to increased melting of land ice and higher ocean temperatures, both of which translate into a global rise in sea level.

Global average sea level measured by tide gauges and altimeters was relatively constant between 1900 and 1930. Since that time, sea level has not only risen, but the rate of sea level rise has also increased: tide gauges estimate sea level rising about 1.8 millimetres per year between 1930 and 2000, while the altimeters measured approximately 3.1 millimetres per year between 1993 and 2009.

Q: Do you see a certain time when islands could be below the sea level?

A: The answer to that depends on the elevation of the island and on the tidal range in addition to storm activity and sea level rise. Both storm activity and sea level rise are affected by climate change. Even the orientation of the island relative to prevailing winds affects the likelihood of flooding.

While it may be more than 150 years before sea level is three or four metres higher than in the late 20th century, islands with average elevations of four metres will undergo flooding because tides and storms raise sea level on top of the global average rise.

Predictions vary depending on both the island characteristics and projections for sea level rise, but it is likely that in the early 21st century there will be frequent flooding in most small island states.

Q: What must be done to mitigate the impact of climate change for island inhabitants around the world?

A: To mitigate climate change we should reduce emissions. To adapt to the impacts of sea level rise, we need careful land use choices and adaptable infrastructure. Coastal vegetation such as mangroves can help reduce the impacts of flooding. Conservation of coral reefs also plays a huge role in protecting atolls.

Q: Is climate change an unstoppable phenomenon of contemporary times?

A: We are committed to warming, and sea level rise, even if all emissions stop today, because carbon dioxide remains in the atmosphere for hundreds of years. If we continue emitting GHGs without any reduction, the climate change impacts will be greater and last much longer.

Source: Inter Press Service

The study, published in Remote Sensing last month (7 September), says that about 650,000 people and almost 1,000 buildings in the three communities in the Dansoman area of Accra will be vulnerable to permanent flooding by 2100, as the shoreline recedes by more than 200 metres.

The study says natural and industrial sites will be submerged, and buildings made of commonly used sandcrete — building material made of cement and sand — will be destroyed by flooding. This will cause disease outbreaks, population displacements, loss of land and biodiversity, and decreased fishing catch and earnings, it says.

Based on a SimClim — a computer model system for examining the effects of climate variability and change over time and space — it says this scenario is likely to affect negatively the nearby Densu Ramsar wetland zone, a multi-million dollar salt industry, and local fisheries and farms. The study also revealed that local communities have no systems in place to help them adapt to the problem.

Kwasi Appeaning-Addo, the lead author from the University of Ghana, toldSciDev.Net that the study was mainly motivated by a public outcry over perennial high tides. His team wanted to contribute to knowledge about providing sustainable management and development strategies that deal with the problem.

The study could inform policy planning, said Appeaning-Addo. “The time to act is now,” he added.

According to Ghana’s Hydrological Services Department, the ocean claims 1.5 – 2 metres of Ghana’s 539 kilometre coastline annually, with the most risky areas recording four metres.

Kwabena Kankam-Yeboah, the principal research scientist at the Water Research Institute, in Ghana, said that the main way of dealing with surges of the sea predicted in the study is to adhere strictly to land-use policy and scientific engineering.

But he added the model used in the study was designed elsewhere for climatic conditions different from those in Ghana, which raises questions about its applicability.

Carl Fiati, officer in-charge of marine resources and coastlines in the Ghana Environmental Protection Agency, said that, although climate change is real, studies have not yet proved that rising sea levels and high tidal waves experienced in Ghana are caused by rising temperatures and changing climate.

Link to full paper in Remote Sensing.

Source: SciDevNet

But many of those people are likely to move from areas affected by global warming into areas even worse afflicted – for instance, by moving into coastal cities in the developing world that are at risk of flood from storms and rising sea levels.

“Millions will migrate into, rather than away from, areas of environmental vulnerability,” said Sir John Beddington, chief scientific advisor to the UK government, and head of the Foresight programme. “An even bigger policy challenge will be the millions who are trapped in dangerous conditions and unable to move to safety.”

Scientists  found that between 114 million and 192 million more people were likely to be living in floodplains in urban areas of Africa and Asia by 2060, partly as a result of climate change.

People who are trapped by warming – either because they cannot move from their homes, or because they have moved but are unable to find better places to live – will represent “just as important a policy concern as those who do migrate”, the report concluded. “Environmental change is equally likely to make migration less possible, as more probable.”

Last year, according to the United Nations, 210 million people – about 3% of the global population – migrated between countries, and in 2009 about 740 million people moved within countries.

But the scientists also said that migration should not be seen simply as a problem – in many cases, it is a sensible solution to the environmental changes caused by a warming climate, and can be managed if governments make adequate preparations. “Migration can be a good option – it is a way of adapting to climate change,” said Neil Adger, professor of environmental economics at the University of East Anglia. “We should be planning for migration pro-actively, to ensure that the necessary infrastructure is in place for people.”

He said that equipping cities in developing countries with adequate infrastructure, including access to clean water, sanitation and energy, was a key concern. Funds devoted to helping countries cope with the effects of climate change should also be spent with this in mind, he said.

Although the scientists who wrote the report declined to put an estimate on the number of people likely to be displaced, they said it was “undeniable” that migration would be a major factor, and one that would be potentially destabilising to established governments.

Previous attempts to put an estimate on the number displaced have met with controversy – a prediction by the United Nations Environment Programme that 50 million people would be forced to migrate by climate change by 2010 was attacked by climate change sceptics, who said there was no proof of how many of the 210 million people who moved across borders in that year had been forced to flee by environmental conditions.

The Foresight programme scientists said there were many factors influencing migration, but that climate change was likely to become a much more significant factor in the next 20 to 30 years.

Trying to stop migration from global warming may be the wrong approach, the scientists warned. Andre Geddes, professor of politics at the University of Sheffield, said: “Policies that just seek to prevent migration are risky.”

Instead, governments should attempt to anticipate movement and find ways to improve conditions, both in the places people are likely to move to, and those they are likely to move from.