(IRIN) September 9, 2009 – Many recent studies have put the number of climate-change-related migrants at between 200 million and one billion by 2050, but critics say given insufficient data it is impossible to estimate the number. Some say inflated figures have spurred “fear-of-migration” rhetoric from policymakers and leaders.
“It seems unlikely the alarmist predictions of hundreds of millions of environmental refugees moving as a result of climate change,” says Cecilia Tacoli, senior researcher with London-based NGO the Institute of Environment and Eco-Development. Tacoli will publish a study ‘Crisis or adaptation? Migration and climate change in a context of high mobility’ in October.
“What is more likely is that we will see current high mobility trends continue and intensify, linked to income diversification.”
Projected migrant figures are based on estimates of the number of people living in areas most likely to be affected by climate change, rather than the number of people who are most likely to move, Tacoli says.
A study released 4 September by the UK government’s Governance and Social Development Resource Centre (GSDRC), notes: “Climate change is an extremely complicated and complex process. Migration is equally a study in its own right. Drawing any direct causal relationships is not only methodologically wrong, it is dangerous.”
One danger of inflating migrant figures, Tacoli says, is that it foments “fear” rhetoric among national leaders, many of whom now frame climate change as a national security issue.
(IOM) September 4, 2009 – Geneva, Switzerland – IOM Director General William Lacy Swing and Achim Steiner, Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), have today signed a cooperation agreement pledging closer cooperation between the two organizations in the field of climate change, the environment and migration.
The agreement between IOM and UNEP marks a growing recognition of the need to jointly address climate change, environmental degradation and migration in a comprehensive manner at policy, research and programmatic level at Headquarters and in field locations where both organizations are represented.
The two organizations will focus on concrete joint efforts to:
– Develop and enhance policy, operational coherence and planning at the national and international levels
– Develop joint research and exchange of information on the links between climate change, environment and migration in order to make this information publicly available
– Build the capacity of governments and other relevant stakeholders to respond effectively to the challenges presented by the cross-section between climate change, environment and migration
– Develop and implement joint programmes in the area of climate change, environment and migration to promote the positive contribution of migration to sustainable development and to support the adaptation of vulnerable groups and states affected by climate change in order to mitigate its negative effects
– Develop and implement environmentally-sustainable migration management programmes, including in crisis migration management and long-term solutions.
IOM and UNEP will also explore collaborative efforts in areas related to public-health, including the development and implementation of health-related programmes for populations displaced by, or on the move, as a result of environmental factors.
(IRIN) September 2, 2009 – Thousands of Syrian farming families have been forced to move to cities in search of alternative work after two years of drought and failed crops followed a number of unproductive years.
“The situation has now got really severe; we are talking about desert, rather than farming land,” said Abdel Qader Abu Awad, MENA (Middle East and North Africa) disaster management coordinator for the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC). “People cannot live in this environment any more and their final coping mechanism is migration.”
Syria‘s drought is now in its second year, affecting farming regions in the north and east of the country, especially the northeastern governorate of Hassakeh. Wheat production is just 55 percent of its usual output and barley is seriously affected, according to the UN’s drought response plan, drawn up following two recent multi-agency missions.
Blamed on a combination of climate change, man-made desertification and lack of irrigation, up to 60 percent of Syria‘s land and 1.3 million people (of a population of 22 million) are affected, according to the UN. Just over 800,000 people have lost their entire livelihood, according to the UN and IFRC.
No-one knows exactly how many people have migrated across the country because of the drought. The Syrian Ministry for Agriculture and Agrarian Reform’s estimate in July was 40,000 to 60,000 families, with 35,000 from Hassakeh alone. But with people moving all the time, the figure is likely to be an underestimate.
Kayly Ober is a new contributor to Towards Recognition. She has written this article below, which compares different proposed instruments advocating formal recognition of environmental migrants, exclusively for this blog.
When you lose your home due to rising sea-levels, creeping desert sands, or harsh hurricane winds; you probably don’t have much time to stop and think: where will I go next? Fortunately, over the past few years, academics from all over the world have taken on the task of deciding not specifically “where next,” but “what next” for those displaced by climate change. Contributions to the legal debate have ranged from the defeatist to the pragmatic, but they have the advantage of always being interesting and adding to the discourse.
In October 2008, for instance, Jane McAdam and Ben Saul wrote a piece for the Sydney Centre for International Law called “An Insecure Climate for Human Security? Climate-Induced Displacement and International Law”. Most notably, the paper examines the concept of “human security” as a potential rally point for legal intervention. Human security is a relatively new term that defines security on a more micro scale, using the individual as a basis for the definition of security rather than the state; and according to the UN Development Programme more specifically guarantees “freedom from fear…and want, including safety from such chronic threats as hunger, disease, repression as well as…from sudden and hurtful disruption in the patterns of daily life” (p. 17). What human security affords climate migrants, McAdam and Saul write, is “flexible political solutions which can respond to immediate needs and provide much-needed domestic legitimation” (p. 2) and the possibility of the intervention of the UN Security Council, under the auspices of Chapter VII of the UN Charter in response to non-traditional threats.
Certainly, using the UN Security Council as a vehicle to legitimize climate migrants and as a response mechanism would be beneficial to both parties – climate migrants would gain a more binding legal status and institutions supporting the security agenda would gain traction in the developing world (p. 19). However, the authors also acknowledge that the use of human security as a legal reference may undermine current human rights law and “replace them with more ambiguous, non-binding, discretionary political agenda” (p. 22). In the end, the ability of existing international law, or new concepts such as human security, to extend full legal rights to climate migrants is dubious.
The United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) has recently updated their policy paper entitled Climate change, natural disasters and human displacement: a UNHCR perspective, which was originally released October 2008. The 14-page paper looks at the human side of climate change, particularly the status and protection needs of those who are most directly affected.
The ongoing theme of this document is the need to encourage more research and reflection on the humanitarian and displacement challenges that climate change will generate. It opens with a quote from António Guterres, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees:
“Although there is a growing awareness of the perils of climate change, its likely impact on human displacement and mobility has received too little attention.”
The paper makes a huge advances in the recognition of environmental migrants from the October 2008 version, stating:
“While environmental factors can contribute to prompting cross-border movements, they are not grounds, in and of themselves, for the grant of refugee status under international refugee law. However, UNHCR does recognise that there are indeed certain groups of migrants, currently falling outside of the scope of international protection, who are in need of humanitarian and/or other forms of assistance.”
The paper is divided into four sections and examines the following:
1) foreseeable displacement scenarios,
2) their implications for UNHCR,
3) terminology and the 1951 Refugee Convention,
4) suggestions for the way forward.
According to the paper, UNHCR admits that it “might take some time to reach an agreement on the appropriate way forward” and “more work is needed to analyze the likely human displacement scenarios which climate change will cause, and to identify and fill any legal and operational gaps”. In the meantime, UNHCR “encourages the international community to adopt approaches based on respect for human rights and international cooperation”. UNHCR also believes that “the need for advocacy on climate change issues will remain in various fora into 2010 and beyond”.
‘Time to Click’ is an internet campaign calling on photographers around the world – professional and amateur alike – to help show the human face of climate change. Time to Click asks photographers to submit pictures that show how climate change affects their communities right now, and how it affects people in the places they’ve traveled to around the world. If you have any pictures to contribute to the campaign, learn how to add them by visiting the website.
Many of these images depict the causes of the mass displacement of human populations from the sudden and creeping effects of climate change. Click on the ‘fullscreen’ button and then ‘Show Info” on the slideshow above to see the description of each image. Alternatively, check out the Time to Click website or the campaign’s Flickr page.
The Time to Click campaign is part of ‘Tck Tck Tck’, an unprecedented global alliance of non-government organizations, trade unions, faith groups and people like you – all calling for an ambitious, fair and binding climate change agreement (timetoclick.org).
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