Stephen Castles Speaks on Climate Refugees (BBC, May 2011) [access]

“Environmental Refugee” Not Accurate for Pacific (Radio Australia, May 2011) [access]

Tuvaluans Don’t Want to be Called Refugees (Radio Australia, May 2011) [access]

Many thanks, fm-cab!

An image from the London Futures exhibition showing Buckingham palace surrounded by a vast shantytown. Photo credit: Jason Hawkes/Museum of London

(The Guardian) October 27, 2010 - The effects of climate change are so hard to imagine that we should welcome an exhibition of Postcards from the Future that promises “Images that bring ideas to life and frame the climate debate in a way that everyone can understand”. Unfortunately the debate it frames is dangerous and the main reason that it can be readily understood is that it fits all too easily with existing prejudices.

The pictures are artfully composed photomontages that juxtapose iconic London landmarks with eye-catching climate impacts – for example the Household Cavalry ride down a sand-strewn Whitehall on camels; an oil palm plantation grows in Hyde Park; and people skate on the Thames after the Gulf Stream packs in.

The creators, Robert Graves and Didier Madoc-Jones, assure us that they “researched different scientific projections”. Really? Not one of these images reflects any real climate scenario for London. They are pure science-fiction.

Certainly they are striking and win attention, but at a price. Public acceptance of climate change is still weak and 55% of people believe that climate change has been exaggerated for political ends. Fantasy images actively feed that public denial and with it the widespread assumption that climate change is conjectural and without firm basis in fact.

However the greatest concern with this show is not that it parts with reality, but that it speaks all too well to real prejudices against immigrants “swamping” British culture. This is a recurring theme. One postcard shows Asian peasants working in paddy fields in the shadow of Big Ben. Two postcards in the series show shantytowns around Nelson’s Columnand Buckingham Palace.

These images cause deep disquiet for those who work with refugees and immigrants. Jonathan Ellis, policy director at the Refugee Council, calls them “lazy and unhelpful” at a time when “we need fresh and creative messages, and a fair and rational debate based on the facts”.

“Producing sensationalist pictures which fall back on cheap stereotypes of refugees do not help anyone’s cause,” says Vaughan Jones, the chief executive of Praxis, a London-based charity that provides practical support for refugees and asylum seekers. “The issue is too serious for this inaccurate treatment.”

Hannah Smith from the Climate Outreach Information Network runs a programme that brings together over 30 refugee, human rights and environment organisations. She argues that the images give an entirely erroneous impression and that “the actual patterns of migration are far more likely to be the movement of people inside existing national borders, or, in the case of the UK, from within the European Union. To suggest that there will be mass migration from the [global] south is misleading and feeds xenophobia.”

These concerns are exacerbated by the language used in the captions. The caption for the Buckingham Palace shantytown talks of the royal family being surrounded by “overwhelming numbers of immigrants”. Another caption, for a picture of monkeys on the balustrade of St Paul’s Cathedral describes them as “a new breed of tropical immigrants reminiscing about equatorial days”. This is a misapplication of language that Hannah Smith regards as deeply insulting.

When I look at the postcards from the perspective of refugee organisations these criticisms seem entirely sensible and self-evident. And they raise a fascinating question: why did the cover story of “climate change” permit the enthusiastic promotion of images and language that would be normally be considered unacceptable in a public exhibition?

One reason is that we have already come to “frame” climate change in this way. Impacts are invariably presented as the crude data of square kilometres flooded or numbers of people displaced. There is still a painful lack of elaboration or analysis of the real political and social impacts of these changes – who will be affected, how will they adapt and where will they go.

This in turn reflects the disturbingly limited range of voices that can be heard talking about climate change. While environmentalists have dominated the public discourse from the outset, it has only been in the past five years that development organisations and unions have become involved.

Human rights and refugee organisations are only now fully recognising the importance of climate change and they are struggling to find their niche and be heard on the issue. “We operate under such constant pressures, both internally and externally, that we have been in the bunker for far too long”, says Jonathan Ellis.

Even the core term “climate refugee”, used universally by environmental organisations and throughout the postcard captions, is inaccurate, argues Vaughan Jones. It took decades of hard campaigning to get refugees protected under international law and “the term must be preserved as a legal status for those fleeing persecution”.

None of this is to doubt the sincerity of the photo-artists or those organising the exhibition. Nor does it imply that climate change is so complex that it cannot be communicated to the general public. All it shows is that climate change is a challenging area, framed by denial, guilt and discrimination, that requires the same intelligence and sensitivity as any exhibition on gender, race or class.

Source: The Guardian

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.

*Recently republished in the International Journal of Refugee Law, Vol. 22, No. 2, July 2010 p. 209-236.

Post by Kayly Ober

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.

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

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.

Click here to access the UNHCR fact sheet »

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Source: Climate-L.org

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”.

Click here to access the policy paper »

Photo credit: UNFCC

Here is an update for those of you that are following the lead up to the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen (COP15) this December. More than 2,000 representatives met at the latest round of the Climate Change Talks, which took place on August 10-14. The committee had the current revised version of the negotiating text in front of them, which is to be fully agreed on by COP15 in order for a post-Kyoto climate deal to take place.

There was a single sentence that was inserted in the previous version of the negotiating text proposed at the June Climate Change Talks, which relates to environmental migration. It calls on nations to implement plans to adapt to climate change by accounting for these possible migrations. This sentence was found in subparagraph 25(e) and stated at the time:

“Activities related to national and international migration/planned relocation of climate
refugees.”

Since then, subparagraph 25(e) has been updated/expanded to the following:

“[Activities related to national and international migration/planned relocation of climate
[refugees] [migrants] [displaced persons by extreme climate events].]

Alternatives to subparagraph 25 (e):
Alternative 1
[Activities related to national and international responses to people displaced by the impacts of climate change]
Alternative 2
[Activities related to national and international migration and displacement or planned relocation of persons affected by adverse impact of climate change]
Alternative 3
[Activities related to national and international migration/planned relocation of displaced individuals and peoples due to the adverse effects of climate change]“

It should be noted that every entry in the negotiating text which is contained in [square brackets] is an indication that it’s an unresolved issue. As you can see, there is still no solid agreement on this specific entry in the negotiating document. Instead, many still unagreed alternative sentences are presented.

Briefing the media on the last day of the informal consultations in Bonn, UNFCCC Executive Secretary Yvo de Boer said that while selective progress had been made to consolidate the huge texts on the table, “at this rate, we will not make it”. “We seem to be afloat on a sea of brackets”, de Boer also said, referring to not only paragraph 25(e), but also the other unresolved issues in the text.

Work on the draft negotiating text will continue on September 28 in Bangkok at a two-week session. Delegates will then assemble for five days of pre-Copenhagen negotiations in Barcelona on November 2. The UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen takes place from December 7-18, 2009. Do you think there will be a formal agreement made in time regarding the provision and financing mechanisms to protect people displaced by the impacts of climate change?

Related Links:
» [Square brackets] riddle 200 page text at Bonn informal talks – Examiner.com
» Gloomy Negotiators End Bonn Climate Talks – New York Times
» Closing Press Briefing, Bonn Climate Change Talks – August 2009 – YouTube video
» More From the Bonn Climate Change Talks – Towards Recognition

Quoted from the introduction:

“This Article proposes a new legal instrument to confront the issue of climate change refugees. It defines climate change refugees as people whom climate change forces to relocate across national borders.
…
It provides a more in-depth examination of a climate change refugee legal instrument that draws on multiple areas of the law, including human rights, humanitarian, and international environmental law. It looks to legal precedent to provide models and support for its proposals, yet it adapts or departs from this precedent when appropriate to tackle the unique problem of climate change. The Article also crafts an original definition of climate change refugee, details a different combination of components for a binding instrument, and calls for implementing these components as an independent treaty.
…
This Article analyzes the limits of the refugee and climate change frameworks and the value of developing a convention that is separate from these legal regimes.”

It is divided into six parts:

Part I – Introduction

Part II – “Both illuminates the climate change refugee problem and the gap in existing international law and locates the proposed instrument within a larger, interdisciplinary framework for dealing with climate change migration.”

Part III – “Develops a definition for climate change refugee that builds on related law and academic literature yet is designed for the circumstances of climate change.”

Part IV – “Presents and analyzes nine essential components of an effective climate change refugee instrument that provides rights and aid for affected communities while ensuring that responsibility is shared.”

Part V – “Argues that the international community should realize the proposed instrument as an independent convention.”

Part VI – Conclusion

Towards Recognition applauds and endorses this highly progressive article. It is worth having an entire read-through. Please leave any comments or questions you may have about it.

In the report, the authors focus on a case study of Zimbabweans living in South Africa and Botswana. An estimated 2 million Zimbabweans have fled their country since 2005 – for many, resorting to the only available means of survival, Betts says (AlertNet.org).

According to Betts, only 10 percent of those Zimbabweans arriving in South Africa have been officially recognised as refugees. “The majority of Zimbabwean migrants – like an increasing number of migrants elsewhere in the world – have been forced to flee a combination of state failure, severe environmental distress, or widespread livelihood collapse, rather than as individuals fleeing political persecution as required by international refugee law.” Because of this, they have received limited legal protection and are extremely susceptible to poverty, harassment, and xenophobic attacks in South Africa and Botswana.

Although Betts admits it would be difficult to get states to endorse “survival migration” as a legal definition, he notes the success of protection regimes of people who are forced to migrate within their own borders, particularly the United Nations “soft law” document “Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement”, which was drafted in 1998. An attempt to address the needs of survival migrants could drawn upon this document.

“There are a number of reasons to be optimistic,” Betts said. “The new realities of forced migration – climate change, livelihood collapse, state collapse – underpin the fact that the definition of refugee under the 1951 convention is not adequate. There’s a growing acceptance that something needs to be done to supplement the convention.”

The paper, entitled “National and international responses to the Zimbabwean exodus: implications for the refugee protection regime”, will be available online on the UNHCR website in the coming weeks.

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Related Links:
“Time to redefine refugees as ‘survival migrants’?” – Reuters AlertNet (July 2009)
“Definition of a refugee needs updating, report tells United Nations” – University of Oxford
“Zimbabwe and the urgent need for better global migration governance” – The GEGblog