(Reuters AlertNet) June 16, 2010 – KOKRAJHAR, India – Swdwmsri Narzary, 19, a nimble weaver, rests her fingers on her loom and gets a faraway look when asked to recall her last few years of struggle dealing with the pressures of climate change.
Orphaned at an early age, Swdwmsri lived with her elder brother and his family in Bijni, a rural village in Assam province’s Chirang district. But increasingly unpredictable weather conditions – drought one year, incessant and untimely rains the next – made life gradually harder as the family’s crops repeatedly failed.
With the family on the verge of starvation, Swdwmsri had to drop out of school. Her brother decided not to waste money sowing new crops and instead used his remaining cash to migrate to a nearby city, Guwahati, in search of a job.
Swdwmsri realized she had to find her own means of livelihood. But she had few options. It was then she met a lady from her village who promised her a good job in Guwahati.
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.
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.
Here is a quick update for those of you that are following the UNFCCC Climate Change Talks. The twelfth session of the AWG-KP and tenth session of the AWG-LCA took place from June 1-11 in Bonn. The meeting brought together representatives from 182 countries was attended by over 4,500 participants, including government delegates, representatives from business and industry, environmental organisations and research institutions.
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.
(Displacement Solutions) June 10, 2010 – Extreme climate events – be it the result of environmental destruction by people, or naturally occurring changes in cl
imate – are forcing people to flee their traditional place of residence with
enormous sufferings in points of transit and the points of destination without any support from aid agencies or Government authorities. ACR (Association for Climate Refugees), a network of NGOs have been making some efforts in seeking answers to basic questions, like how and where the people have been made refugees*, who the refugees are, and how many there are.
Where and how: Mass scale forced displacement has been caused by tidal floods in the exposed coastal area and loss of land due to erosion in the main land river basins
The population living in South and South-East Asia on the coastline extending from the east coast of India to Myanmar have been buffeting by annual cyclones from the Bay of Bengal and ever increasing tidal floods. Due
to its extensive coastal geography, Bangladesh is undoubtedly one of the most affected countries. Cyclones not only result in human casualties and destruction of property, but also leave behind perpetual tidal floods. Notably, over the last few years deadly cyclones have been commonplace: Cyclone Sidr of 2007, Nargis of 2008, Aila of 2009, and Laila of 2010. Bangladesh was hit directly by Sidr while Nargis, Aila, and Laila also wreaked havoc in Myanmar and India, respectively. Research in Dakshin Bedkashi (Koyra Upazila) reveals that the tidal flood water level has risen by 1 meter over 5 years (2004 to 2008) and it rose by an additional meter in 2009 and in 2010 it continues to rise further. Twelve coastal districts in the south of Bangladesh are particularly at risk: Satkhira, Khulna, Bagerhat, Pirojpur, Barguna, Patuakhali, Bhola, Laxmipur, Feni, Noakhali, Chittagong and Cox’s Bazar.
Around one million people have been rendered homeless due to river erosion in the mainland river basins over the last three decades, as the Brahmaputra-Jamuna continues to widen because of obstruction from upstream sediment and poor downstream erosion management. Official statistics show that the Brahmaputra-Jamuna, a major river system in Bangladesh, has widened by 11.8 km and from 8.3 km in the early ’70s, eroding about 87,790 hectares of land. (CEGIS, 2006). NGOs affiliated with ACR working in the mainland river basin report observing people forced to flee their traditional place of residence due to increasing river erosion. Ten districts are hotspots, namely Kurigram, Gaibandha, Jamalpur, Bogra, Sirajganj, Rangpur, Lalmonirhat, Nilphamari, Mymensingh, and Netrakona.
Bangladesh is comprised of 64 districts, out of which 22 are at risk of climate-induced displacement.
“A complex range of often inter-related factors – including the environment and nature, conflict, and the international political economy – contribute to creating the imperatives and incentives for people to leave their countries and cross international borders”, writes Alexander Betts in *. All of these push factors, he argues, might not necessarily guarantee protective status for what he calls “distress migrants” within the traditional 1951 Refugee Convention.
According to Betts, three broad categories of people stand out as “distress migrants” with unfulfilled protection needs: 1) People who may be considered as “neither/nor” groups, who flee desperate economic and social distress, resulting, for example, from state collapse; 2) People who flee sudden natural disasters such as tsunamis, earthquakes, and flooding; and 3) People who are displaced by slow-onset causes related to environmental degradation or the consequences of climate change. In short, those migrants this blog advocates for.
Although he admits there are gaps in current protection law, he believes that there is no need for the creation of new, binding norms to address them since broad norms already exist.
The international community just needs to a) find an authoritative consensus on the application of current instruments to the situation of vulnerable migrants and b) create a clear division of responsibility between international organizations for the operational implementation of such guidelines.
He suggests that we use a soft law framework like that created for internally displaced persons towards a possible “Guiding Principles on the Protection of Vulnerable Irregular Migrants.” The non-binding nature of soft law is particularly attractive, he argues, because so few powerful states are predisposed to the negotiation of binding, multilateral norms through the UN framework, especially in the touchy area of migration (as
seen in the limited number of signatories of the UN Treaty on the Rights of Migrant Workers).
While Betts believes that “UNHCR would not take on institutional responsibility for the protection of vulnerable migrants, which would be outside of its normative and operational mandate”, it could, however, play a facilitative role by designing and overseeing the soft law framework process. This would fit nicely with the idea of a “collaborative approach” of dividing responsibility among international organizations like the International Federation of the Red Cross, OHCHR, IOM, and a range of NGOs.
