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

In the Pacific Islands, this acute awareness of the potential impact of climate change comes not only from books and studies, but from first-hand knowledge and ongoing experiences with the effects of the world’s changing climate. The value and relevance of these experiences are not confined to the Pacific Islands, but are relevant for the world at large. This paper aims to conceptualize and distill some dimensions of these experiences, in light of the discussions and presentations made at the ‘Regional Workshop on Internal Displacement caused by Natural Disasters and Climate Change in the Pacific’ (May 2011) organized by the Brookings-LSE Project on Internal Displacement in conjunction with the UN Humanitarian team in the Pacific. The synthesis report on the workshop’s proceedings contains additional information in support of the issues outlined and examined in the paper “On the Front Line of Climate Change and Displacement: Learning From and With Pacific Island Countries.”

Manila, Philippines, 14 – 16 September 2011

Asia and the Pacific will be amongst the global regions most affected by the impacts of climate change. Countries of the region are particularly vulnerable because of a high degree of exposure to environmental risks and large population. In recent years, Asia and the Pacific has undergone massive and rapid socioeconomic transformation.

Migration within countries, especially from rural to urban areas, has become significant. Countries and populations of Asia and the Pacific will be affected by climate change in different ways, leading to various migration scenarios. Cross-border migration is likely to increase. Already, the region is home to the most important source of international migrants worldwide.

In 2010, more than 30 million people in Asia and the Pacific were displaced by environmental disasters, such as storms and floods. Many returned home, but others did not. Climate change is expected to increase the frequency of extreme weather events, and over time induce significant sea-level rise. At the same time, the region’s population, now around 4 billion, continues to increase. These developments will result in growing numbers of people on the move for reasons that include environmental factors.

ADB Events

In September 2010, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) launched a technical assistance project to develop policy recommendations to address climate-induced migration in Asia and the Pacific. The project is also considering options to finance actions related to climate-induced migration. This unique project aims to stimulate thinking and action by concerned stakeholders and decision-makers on the local, national, regional, and global levels.

On 14 September 2011, ADB will organize a full-day workshop for researchers of environmental displacement and climate-induced migration in Asia and the Pacific. The workshop will bring together individuals exploring these phenomena in several countries in the region. The aim is to share research findings, compare approaches and methodologies, exchange contacts and references, and forge a new professional network. The workshop is expected to bring together researchers from the whole Asia-Pacific region and others interested in their work.

Then, on 15-16 September 2011, ADB will host a one and a half day regional conference to present its initial policy recommendations for addressing migration associated with current environmental events and predicted environmental changes. The conference will assemble leading experts and decision makers from different disciplines. Representatives of governments, inter-governmental organizations, development agencies, NGOs, the private sector, and academe are expected to participate in the event, including researchers who attended the earlier workshop.

These events are likely to be the largest-ever gathering of researchers of environmental displacement and climate-induced migration in the world’s largest and most populous region. The Honorable Mohamed Aslam, Minister of Housing, Transport and Environment, Maldives, will deliver the keynote address at the regional conference. Among the research institutions and international agencies participating in the program will be the Asian Disaster Preparedness Center, ICHIMOD, IDDRI, International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, International Labour Organization, International Organization for Migration, PIK, Swedish Environmental Institute, UNHCR, and the UNU Institute for Environment and Human Security.

The events will raise awareness of the environment as a driver of migration, opportunities to use migration as a tool of adaptation to climate change, and the need for governments and international agencies to act now to reduce human vulnerability and risk associated with environmental displacement.

If you would like to attend these events, contact Ms. Chet Japson at email mcjapson.consultant@adb.org; telephone +632 632-4444; or fax +632 636 2409.

The paper begins by examining the elements of statehood under public international law. While there is a strong presumption of continuity for established states, the possibility of a total loss of territory for natural reasons, or the total displacement of a population and/or government, is entirely novel, and would present a heightened risk of statelessness. The paper goes on to specifically examine the situation of low-lying island States, and the risk of statelessness that might result from their submersion. The paper concludes by exploring possible actions to prevent statelessness.

Read the paper in its entirety here.

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!

Tessie Eria Lambourne’s bright smile belies a deeper sense of unease for which she as the secretary of Kiribati’s foreign ministry is responsible for imparting to the wider world. Lambourne is entrusted with no small task; she and her government face a choice no government should ever have to make. Fight or flight? The issues her government faces are both unprecedented and extraordinarily complex.

Ms Lambourne’s brief essentially entails nothing less than determining whether to fight for the very survival of her homeland or to pursue options overseas for the country’s threatened citizens. This is the new dilemma in a world where ever more people are facing the prospect that their homes and lands will be lost forever. Especially so in the case of atoll nations such as Kiribati and Tuvalu. The choice to battle the rising seas or set one’s families up in larger, distant nations is a very real one facing everyone in these two lands.

Ms Lambourne is not alone in her fight. Officials in nearby Tuvalu also grapple with the same questions. The unparalleled political wrangle of securing the best possible future for the entire populations of both countries, while watching rising seas from dwindling shorelines, is a mighty one.

Interestingly, though, while Kiribati is pursuing a multi-dimensional policy, combining the protection of shorelines, the construction of new neighbourhoods to ease overcrowding in the capital Tarawa, and labour-mobility programmes designed to provide improved employment options to those choosing to relocate to countries such as New Zealand or Australia, it appears that Tuvalu, at the government level at least, is taking a stand to stay and fight until the bitter end.

Lack of resources

Two of the smallest countries in the world, Kiribati and Tuvalu are also the ones with most to lose. Sadly, they have access to few resources to overcome the threats already evident along their shores. Additionally, in-migration from outer islands to the urban settlements of Betio in Kiribati and Funafuti in Tuvalu complicate an already strained environment.

The emergence of squatter settlements have increased densities, exacerbated health problems, put extraordinary pressure on limited water and sanitation systems, and compromised customary obligations of responsibility for extended family. The reason, as in all countries, is the perception that livelihoods, social opportunity and access to development opportunities are greater in urban contexts, and the result follows urbanisation trends globally.

The nexus of urbanisation and climate change, whatever the causes, is happening in both countries. Measurable changes in meteorological systems producing stronger and more frequent storms; disruption of rainfall patterns; rising sea temperatures – all contribute to increased vulnerability in every country in the world, and are particularly acute in the fragile slivers of crowded land that make up atoll countries such as Kiribati and Tuvalu.

Perhaps no other nations are as comprehensively threatened by climate change as these two. Preserving them, and protecting the full spectrum of human rights of the people of these tiny specks of green in the middle of the Pacific, is a challenge to which we all must rise.

Migration

Apula, a seafarer returning home to Tuvalu after nine months on the high seas, sees things differently though. A former government conservation officer, Apula left home for the maritime salary that could guarantee his wife and children future prosperity in New Zealand, which he could never acquire in the islands. Like him, many within the younger generation of Tuvaluans are increasingly inclined towards migrating to New Zealand or Australia than building up the nation’s defences against increasing erosion, higher seas and consequent deepened risk from more frequent tsunamis, king tides and severe weather.

Source: The Ecologist

Among them: If a country disappears, is it still a country? Does it keep its seat at the United Nations? Who controls its offshore mineral rights? Its shipping lanes? Its fish?

And if entire populations are forced to relocate — as could be the case with citizens of the Maldives, Tuvalu, Kiribati and other small island states facing extinction — what citizenship, if any, can those displaced people claim?

Until recently, such questions of sovereignty and human rights have been the domain of a scattered group of lawyers and academics. But now the Republic of the Marshall Islands — a Micronesian nation of 29 low-lying coral atolls in the North Pacific — is campaigning to stockpile a body of knowledge it hopes will turn international attention to vulnerable countries’ plights.

“At the current negotiating sessions and climate change meetings, nobody is truly addressing the legal and human rights effects of climate change,” said Phillip Muller, the Marshall Islands’ ambassador to the United Nations.

“If the Marshall Islands ceases to exist, are we still going to own the sea resources? Are we still going to be asked for permission to fish? What are the rights that we will have? And we are also mindful that we may need to relocate. We’re hoping it will never happen, but we have to be ready. There are a lot of issues we need to know the answer to and be able to tell our citizens what is happening,” he said.

Frustrated by the dearth of answers to the questions he was posing, Muller said, Marshall Islands leaders contacted Columbia Law School. Michael Gerrard, who leads the law school’s Center for Climate Change Law, picked up the challenge and issued a call for papers.

Theoretical questions become real

Gerrard, who is arranging a conference sponsored by Columbia University’s Earth Institute next year, said that when he began reaching out to scholars, he realized most were working in isolation from one another. And, he said, some of the most ticklish legal questions facing small island nations have been understudied — because until recently, the notion of a country’s extinction has been largely theoretical.

“The prospect of a nation drowning is so horrific that it’s hard to imagine,” Gerrard said. Moreover, he added, until just a few years ago, it was difficult to have a conversation in the international community about how countries might adapt to climate change.

“There was a concern that it would divert focus from mitigation. But now people recognize that even with the most aggressive imaginable mitigation measures, the climate situation will get worse before it gets better, and we have to begin making serious preparation,” he said.

The plight of refugees is the most emotional of the looming questions. Deciding where to relocate citizens is just the beginning for a disappearing nation. Still unanswered: What will the political status of those displaced people be? Will they assimilate into the culture and economy of their new host country, or will they retain a separate identity?

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) estimates that rising sea levels, saltwater intrusion and accelerated coastal erosion could lead to as many as 200 million environmentally induced migrants worldwide by 2050.

The Carteret Islanders of Papua New Guinea could be some of the world’s first climate “refugees.” The land is expected to be under water by 2015, and Papua New Guinea’s mission to the United Nations has already announced it would evacuate the approximately 2,000 islanders to Bougainville Island — about a four-hour boat ride away.

Maldives wants a fund of last resort

Meanwhile, in the Maldives, President Mohamed Nasheed declared upon entering office that he would create a sovereign fund — something of a last-resort insurance policy — in the event that the country’s 305,000 citizens would require relocation. The fund fell victim to budget shortfalls, but Maldivian officials have said it had the desired effect of raising awareness in the international community.

And while environmental migration is not a new phenomenon, the projected scale of human movement over a short period of time is unprecedented. But, noted University of New South Wales professor Jane McAdam, “there is at present no internationally agreed definition of what it means to be an environmental ‘migrant,’ ‘refugee,’ or ‘displaced person,’ and consequently, no agreed label for those affected.”

Edward Cameron, former senior adviser to the government of the Maldives, added: “We see at the moment how many people are on the move in Pakistan.” While the floods devastating that country have been displacing millions internally, Cameron asked, “What if they were on the move across an international border? They certainly wouldn’t have refugee status.”

But while questions abound over the status and rights of displaced persons, experts say that field of study is burgeoning compared to the study of sovereign rights of vulnerable countries.

McAdam, who has looked at the question of whether a disappeared nation could retain its U.N. seat, noted that there is no automatic triggering mechanism that “undoes” a state.

“Certainly states have ceased to exist in the past, but it’s through occupation, war, state secession,” McAdam said. The closest thing to an extinct nation would be a government in exile. Yet even that assumes the government will eventually return to its territory — something climate change may make impossible.

“There’s precedent for other things that we can draw on, but … there’s no self-executing formula for deciding when a country doesn’t exist anymore,” she said.

Cleo Paskal, associate fellow at Chatham House and author of “Global Warring: How Environmental, Economic and Political Crises Will Redraw the World Map,” said one of her top worries is the fate of countries’ maritime exclusive economic zones.

Those areas where countries have exclusive rights to the resources are measured from coastlines or offshore islands. But, Paskal noted, the laws assume the coastlines won’t change or disappear. That’s already happening.

Laws assume coastlines are a constant

“Any country with a coastline or offshore islands that are being used to anchor claims need to start thinking about if that coastline or offshore island is affected, and what will that do to the exclusive economic zone claims?” she said. “The core issue is that we have written our laws, regulations, subsidies on the assumption that the environment is a constant, and it isn’t.”

Moreover, as Paskal noted in a recent blog post, countries that take in climate “refugees” might make a case for governing the former nation’s maritime zone — something she described as a “very lucrative and geopolitically touchy proposition.”

Meanwhile, Paskal and others warn that well before a country disappears under rising waters, it will face less provocative but deeply vexing problems.

“On your way down, before your country disappears, you’ve got desalination problems, agriculture problems, import problems. You might lose your fresh water; your land might start to degrade because of saltwater intrusion,” Paskal said.

Cameron said threatened nations need answers to the vexing legal questions of land, water and migration for their own sakes as well as to send a signal to developed countries stalling on climate change action that “if you don’t come up with a response, we’re going to start looking at legal options.” But more broadly, he said, the international community needs to start viewing climate change through the lens of human rights.

“What we’re trying to do in this debate is take an old issue, which is climate change, and make people look at it in a completely different way … as a human and social issue instead of an ecological issue,” he said. “Climate change is not about polar bears; it’s about people, and human rights helps us to understand it as a human issue.”

Source: Climate Wire

Copyright 2010 E&E Publishing. All Rights Reserved.

As her book summary outlines:

Environmental migration is not new. Nevertheless, the events and processes accompanying global climate change threaten to increase human movement both within States and across international borders. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has predicted an increased frequency and severity of climate events such as storms, cyclones and hurricanes, as well as longer-term sea level rise and desertification, which will impact upon people’s ability to survive in certain parts of the world.

This book brings together a variety of disciplinary perspectives on the phenomenon of climate-induced displacement. With chapters by leading scholars in their field, it collects in one place a rigorous, holistic analysis of this phenomenon, which can better inform academic understanding and policy development alike. Governments have not been prepared to take a leading role in developing responses to the issue, in large part due to the absence of strong theoretical frameworks from which sound policy can be developed. The specialist expertise of the authors in this book means that each chapter identifies key issues that need to be considered in shaping domestic, regional and international responses, including the complex causes of movement, the conceptualisation of migration responses to climate change, the terminology that should be used to describe those who move, and attitudes to migration that may affect decisions to stay or leave. The book will help to facilitate the creation of principled, research-based responses, and establish climate-induced displacement as an important aspect of both the climate change and global migration debates.

She includes chapters by familiar and influential migration, human rights, environmental, and legal scholars:

• “Climate Change-Induced Mobility and the Existing Migration Regime in Asia and the Pacific” by Graeme Hugo
• “Migration as Adaptation: Opportunities and Limits” by Jon Barnett and Michael Webber
• “Climate-Induced Community Relocation in the Pacific: The Meaning and Importance of Land” by John Campbell
• “Conceptualising Climate-Induced Displacement” by Walter Kälin
• “‘Disappearing States’, Statelessness and the Boundaries of International Law” by Jane McAdam
• “Protecting People Displaced by Climate Change: Some Conceptual Challenges” by Roger Zetter
• “International Ethical Responsibilities to ’Climate Change Refugees’” by Peter Penz
• “Climate Migration and Climate Migrants: What Threat, Whose Security?” by Lorraine Elliott
• “Climate-Related Displacement: Health Risks and Responses” by Anthony J McMichael, Celia E McMichael, Helen L Berry and Kathryn Bowen
• “Climate Change, Human Movement and the Promotion of Mental Health: What have we Learnt from Earlier Global Stressors?” by Maryanne Loughry
• “Afterword: What Now? Climate-Induced Displacement after Copenhagen” by Stephen Castles

We have yet to read the book, but it seems set to be an essential part of any climate change and migration reader’s diet.

“Human movement caused by environmental factors is not new. Natural and human-induced environmental disasters and slow-onset degradation have displaced people in the past, and will continue to do so in the future. Such movement is a normal part of adaptation to change. The ‘newness’ of displacement triggered (at least in part) by climate change is its underlying anthropogenic basis, the large number of people thought to be susceptible to it, and the relative speed with which climate change is to occur, which may hamper people’s traditional adaptive patterns that historically were able to develop over time. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, it is becoming difficult to categorize displaced people because of the combined impacts of conflict, the environment and economic pressures. While the term ‘refugee’ describes only a narrow sub-class of the world’s forced migrants, it is often misapplied to those who move (or who are anticipated to move) for environmental or climate reasons. As explored below, this is not only erroneous as a matter of law, but is conceptually inaccurate as well. In contexts such as the so-called ‘sinking islands’ of Kiribati and Tuvalu in the South Pacific, movement is less likely to be in the nature of sudden flight, and more likely to be pre-emptive and planned. This does not mean it is not ‘forced’, but rather that top-down policy responses and normative frameworks that predicate forced migration on a particular notion of exodus may not match up to realities of movement. Furthermore, while ‘development-induced displacement’ and ‘conflict-induced displacement’ describe primary motivations for movement in certain contexts, field research in Tuvalu and Kiribati highlights the difficulties of describing human movement from these States as exclusively ‘climate-induced displacement’…” To read more, go here.