(Cop15.dk) November 5, 2009 – UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Wednesday
warned that the problem of environmental refugees from developing countries is increasing the pressure for a climate change agreement at an upcoming conference in Copenhagen.
Ban said that the global talks on climate change have also reached a “critical period” in the weeks ahead of the Dec. 7-18 climate conference.
On Tuesday, African nations staged a one-day walkout from the UN climate talks in Barcelona, Spain, to press demands that negotiations focus more heavily on carbon emission cuts by rich nations. The protesting countries said they would be hardest hit by the effects of global warming.
“Negotiations have recognized that migration is a likely consequence of climate impacts. Populations will relocate due to more extreme weather, including prolonged droughts, intensive storms and wildfires,” Ban said.
“In Africa, expanding desertification is … prompting more people to leave rural areas. So far these movements have occurred within countries. But that could very well change over time,” he said.
Ban spoke at an international conference on immigration Wednesday in Greece, where he began a two-day official visit.
“Protecting vulnerable communities must be a priority,” he said. “We need action in Copenhagen. We will continue to push for the most ambitious agreement possible.”
In London on Tuesday, Ban acknowledged that agreements on firm carbon emission cuts may not be reached in Copenhagen, but that progress toward that goal could be made.
(IRIN) October 29, 2009 – An African international agreement has opened the door to a debate on the rights and protection of people displaced by natural disasters, with a nod to migration as a result of climate change.
The Kampala Convention, a ground-breaking treaty adopted by the African Union (AU), promises to protect and assist millions of Africans displaced within their own countries. Significantly, the treaty recognized natural disasters as well as conflict and generalized violence as key factors in uprooting people.
Jean Ping, chairperson of the Commission of the African Union, told IRIN that “more and more people are likely to be displaced” as Africa experiences more frequent droughts and floods brought about by climate change.
He said the inclusion of displacement by natural disasters was informed by the global debate on the need to develop a framework for the rights of “climate refugees” – people uprooted from their homes and crossing international borders – because the changing climate threatened their survival.
The treaty also calls on governments to set up laws and find solutions to prevent displacement caused by natural disasters, with compensation for those who were displaced. Migration expert Etienne Piguet said with the Kampala Convention the AU had “once again” tried to push the envelope.
The summit was a success and out of it came the adoption of the groundbreaking Convention on Protection and Assistance to Internally Displaced Persons in Africa. The Convention is the first continent-wide instrument to address the specific plight of internally displaced people. It integrates the main aspects of international humanitarian law and will oblige AU states for the first time to prevent internal displacement, come up with solutions to the causes of displacement, and provide internally displaced people with basic rights. People forced to flee will find in the Convention the full range of rights they should be entitled to – before, during and after displacement. For the Convention to enter into force, at least 15 AU member states would have to ratify it.
The Convention is also the first of its kind in many ways with regards to legitimizing increasing environmental migration and displacement. It is a legally binding regional treaty that recognizes the multiple causes of internal displacement, including natural disasters and climate change as drivers of this phenomenon. In 2008, there were 104 internationally reported natural disasters, 99 percent of which were climate related. Moreover, the number of people in Africa affected by natural disasters has doubled over the last 20 years, from 9 million in 1989 to nearly 17 million in 2008.
The actual entry relating to climate change displacement in the Convention can be found Article 5: “Obligations of States Parties relating to Protection and Assistance”, Section 4, and states:
“States Parties shall take measures to protect and assist persons who have been internally displaced due to natural or human made disasters, including climate change.”
United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator John Holmes was in attendance. “In reality, displacement prompted by natural disasters and climate change, and the resultant food and water shortages, promise to be one of the greatest – if not the greatest – challenge many countries will face in the years ahead,” stressed Mr. Holmes in a speech during the summit. “Many of you here today already know all too well from recent painful experiences how climate change is increasing the frequency and intensity of extreme natural-hazard events, particularly floods, storms and droughts,” he added.
The recognition of climate change as a driver of displacement in this AU instrument sends a signal to the rest of the international community, including the United Nations, about the seriousness with which Africa, home to around half of the global total of internally displaced persons, considers this issue.
(AFP) October 23, 2009 – KAMPALA – African leaders recognised climate change as a major cause of human displacement during a two-day summit on the plight of the continent’s refugees which closed Friday in Kampala.
Several African nations adopted a document on the rights of the continent’s 17 million internally-displaced persons (IDP), refugees and returnees.
“The important thing about this convention is that it applies to conflict and climate as causes of displacement,” the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres told reporters shortly after the signing.
“I am confident about the awareness of how seriously African countries will be affected by climate change,” he said.
In 2008, there were 104 recognised natural disasters in Africa and 99 percent were climate related, John Holmes, United Nations Undersecretary General for Humanitarian Affairs, said at the Kampala Summit.
According to Holmes, a recorded 700,000 people on the continent were displaced by climate events in 2008, but he said he suspects the real number is much higher.
(Climate-L.org) The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) has released a fact sheet on the involvement, challenges and responses that the organization is facing in addressing the impacts of climate change.
Currently, UNHCR estimates that the number of refugees worldwide exceeds 15 million, with an additional 26 million internally displaced persons (IDPs) who have fled persecution. Climate change is expected to increase the number of people who are displaced and unable to return to their homes. Nevertheless, UNHCR notes that the term ‘climate refugee’ is not appropriate, as the existing refugee regimes and legal definitions focus on refugees and IDPs who have fled from persecution.
The publication notes that the lack of formal internal protection
for those who are displaced due to environmental reasons increases the challenge that climate change poses for the work of humanitarian agencies such as the UNHCR. In response to this situation, UNCHR is engaging with partners within the humanitarian community to integrate disaster risk reduction into country programmes to prepare for natural disaster emergencies. Through appropriate inter-agency frameworks, UNHCR will also attempt to provide protection to all IDPs, including those fleeing from natural disasters.
(AFP) October 18, 2009 – MALE – Maldivian President Mohamed Nasheed, who staged the world’s first underwater cabinet meeting at the weekend, is emerging as the global stuntman in the battle against climate change.
Nasheed, 42, dived with his cabinet to the sea bottom Saturday in an effort to press December’s UN summit in Copenhagen to cap carbon
emissions that cause global warming, threatening low-lying nations such as the Maldives.
“We should come out of Copenhagen with a deal that will ensure that everyone will survive,” said the president as he bobbed in the shimmering Indian Ocean after the meeting.
A presidential aide said the event, to highlight the threat facing the resort paradise — which scientists warn could be submerged by rising sea levels by the century’s end, was Nasheed’s idea.
He said a New York-based environmental group had wanted the president to hold a banner underwater to push for cuts in global greenhouse gas emissions.
But Nasheed, the youngest leader in South Asia, went one better, with the 30-minute meeting intended to highlight a potentially watery future for the 1,192 coral islands that make up the Maldives.
It was only the latest in a series of eye-catching public relations moves by Nasheed, a former journalist, to focus the spotlight on climate change and how it could affect the archipelago, known as an idyllic getaway for the rich.
The president stunned the world last year when he announced he wanted to buy a new homeland to relocate the population of the Maldives in the event that damage from rising sea levels became too great.
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