“I think it’s appropriate to think about [climate change] adaptation or investments in adaptation as investments to open up the range of choices available to people to deal with an uncertain future,” said Jon Barnett, associate professor of geography at the University of Melbourne, in an interview with ECSP. “In some circumstances it might be appropriate to build infrastructure and hard options where we’re very certain about the nature of the risk…but in other cases, expanding the range of choices and freedoms and opportunities that people have to deal with climate change in the future is perhaps the better strategy.”

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

The study, published in Remote Sensing last month (7 September), says that about 650,000 people and almost 1,000 buildings in the three communities in the Dansoman area of Accra will be vulnerable to permanent flooding by 2100, as the shoreline recedes by more than 200 metres.

The study says natural and industrial sites will be submerged, and buildings made of commonly used sandcrete — building material made of cement and sand — will be destroyed by flooding. This will cause disease outbreaks, population displacements, loss of land and biodiversity, and decreased fishing catch and earnings, it says.

Based on a SimClim — a computer model system for examining the effects of climate variability and change over time and space — it says this scenario is likely to affect negatively the nearby Densu Ramsar wetland zone, a multi-million dollar salt industry, and local fisheries and farms. The study also revealed that local communities have no systems in place to help them adapt to the problem.

Kwasi Appeaning-Addo, the lead author from the University of Ghana, toldSciDev.Net that the study was mainly motivated by a public outcry over perennial high tides. His team wanted to contribute to knowledge about providing sustainable management and development strategies that deal with the problem.

The study could inform policy planning, said Appeaning-Addo. “The time to act is now,” he added.

According to Ghana’s Hydrological Services Department, the ocean claims 1.5 – 2 metres of Ghana’s 539 kilometre coastline annually, with the most risky areas recording four metres.

Kwabena Kankam-Yeboah, the principal research scientist at the Water Research Institute, in Ghana, said that the main way of dealing with surges of the sea predicted in the study is to adhere strictly to land-use policy and scientific engineering.

But he added the model used in the study was designed elsewhere for climatic conditions different from those in Ghana, which raises questions about its applicability.

Carl Fiati, officer in-charge of marine resources and coastlines in the Ghana Environmental Protection Agency, said that, although climate change is real, studies have not yet proved that rising sea levels and high tidal waves experienced in Ghana are caused by rising temperatures and changing climate.

Link to full paper in Remote Sensing.

Source: SciDevNet

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.”

This was not the first such catastrophe: Majuro has grown used to battling a major tidal event every decade or so. However, as global carbon emissions continue to increase, sea levels rise and tropical weather events become more numerous and intense, these events will become ever more common. The Marshallese people can respond to such crises every few years, but they cannot respond every few months, and it is possible (indeed probable) that life as they know it will become untenable by the end of the century. This fact raises serious questions about the continued viability of these nations, as well as protections for individuals who may need to relocate.

In late May this year, legal and policy experts from around the world gathered at Columbia Law School to address these and other questions arising from the impacts of global climate change – particularly rising sea levels – on small-island nations.

Speaking at the event, panelist Mary Elena Carr, associate director of the Columbia Climate Center, highlighted the scientific consensus: that, without any remediating activity, the Marshall Islands and other low-lying island nations around the world could become uninhabitable in a matter of decades, a serious security risk which can no longer be ignored. Sea-level rise will be particularly acute in the Pacific and other island regions, where increased intensity and severity of weather patterns, including so-called “king tide” and “el niño” events, may overwhelm domestic infrastructure and water supplies, as well as local ecosystems.

To underscore the severity of this issue and the importance of adaptation generally, Carr warned that, even if everybody stopped emitting greenhouse gases now “we will still have warming for over 1000 years…[and] just from the warming of water, we will still have one metre of sea-level rise by 2100.”

This raises a fundamental question: what happens to the nations themselves if their islands become uninhabitable? On this point, Jenny Grote-Stoutenburg, visiting scholar at the University of California, Berkeley, argued that “the international law of statehood is characterised by a tension between the principle of effectiveness [asking whether a state has a territory, population, government and independence] and another competing principle, the principle of legality…[which holds that] the extinction of states must not violate some fundamental norms of international legal order, called jus cogens norms.”

In other words, it is highly possible that some traditional requirements for statehood – permanent territory and population – may no longer be met by some of these countries, but that other nations will continue to recognise them for equitable reasons (and in fact may be legally obligated to do so), meaning the indices of statehood can likely be preserved. This might most effectively happen via some ex-situ arrangement, as outlined by University of Hawaii academic Maxine Burkett, whereby country representatives would manage and distribute national resources to a scattered population.

The extent of these resources depends heavily on nations’ ability to continue to access marine territories, which provide critical fishing and mineral rights. As currently set by the Law of the Sea Convention (LOSC), Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs) – waters over which a state has special rights for exploration and resource-use – extend 200 nautical miles (just over 370 kilometres) from a nation’s low-tide mark. However, the convention is not clear regarding permanent boundaries, and so traditionally EEZs would recede along with the coast if sea levels rose.

Of more concern to small-island nations, substantial marine territory – as much as 40,000 square nautical miles (137,000 square kilometres) – could be threatened by the abandonment of a single island, because the LOSC clearly disallows marine territory for uninhabitable rocks. In response to this, David Freestone of The George Washington University notes that precedent elsewhere would support artificially bulwarking islands to preserve existing claims – most (in)famously, Japan has bolsteredOkinotorishma Island from a rock to a full base that serves as a basis for territorial expansion to the south. Although this has been repeatedly challenged by other nations, for equitable reasons they would be less likely to object to similar bulwarking by small-island nations.

If certain small-island nations become uninhabitable, their populations will have to move somewhere, but it remains unclear where they would go. Unfortunately, the patchwork of international protections for displaced peoples will not provide extensive guidance: refugee law as defined by the1951 Convention on Refugees probably would not apply to climate migrants (although subsequent clarifying agreements applying to Africa and the Americas might); and there is no international obligation for any particular country to take in such migrants. Similarly, protections in the United States and Europe for victims of environmental disasters are temporary, and leave no path to full residency.

In response, as New York University law professor Katrina Wyman has discussed, the best option for individual nations may be to rely on existing agreements and relationships with potential destination countries that allow migration for other reasons or purposes. Domestic immigration laws in certain countries may also be used.

Options also exist in international institutions to provide more aid and support to climate-displaced peoples. Traditional institutions that could be integral to this effort include the International Organization for Migrationand the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) may also be of potential use in organising resettlement activities. This is particularly true following last year’s climate negotiations in Cancún, which recognised the importance of “measures to enhance understanding, coordination and cooperation with regard to climate change induced displacement…at national, regional and international levels”. As Australian lawyer Ilona Millar suggested, the UNFCCC could perhaps be used to harness private-sector funding and insurance protection for vulnerable parties.

If people are forced to resettle, many have argued that they should be able to recover damages in court for harms received. However, the authority for such litigation remains unclear. Substantively, there are several possible bases for establishing a violation of international law, including breach of treaty claims under the UNFCCC, the human right of self-determination, the duty under the World Heritage Convention to “natural and cultural heritage” and theories in tort and certain other areas of the law. One particularly interesting possibility, as described by Dean Bialek, would to be to base a claim on ocean acidification, which could kill off tropical coral species, deplete fish reserves and potentially further undermine the physical stability of coral atolls.

A more difficult question is: which courts could hear such claims and enforce remedies, if such remedies are possible? The International Court of Justiceis the principal judicial organ of the United Nations, but has only limited powers. Certain treaties, including the UNFCCC, offer similarly advisory commissions which could perhaps hear such cases. Access to domestic courts in key major emitters is also uncertain; the United States, especially in recent caselaw, famously makes it difficult for foreigners to gain access to US Courts under the Alien Tort Claims Act.

However, at least one lawsuit initiated by the Federated States of Micronesia has had success fighting carbon emissions in Czech Republic courts, by challenging an environmental-impact assessment for a proposed coal-fired power plant on the grounds it failed to adequately account for transboundary (read: climate) impacts. The success of this case was largely based on Czech provisions that allow foreigners access to domestic courts, but similar provisions are being scouted out elsewhere in Europe and around the world, and may provide further options for establishing jurisdiction.

If resettlement becomes unavoidable, then that process must be organised. As Brad Blitz from UK-based Kingston University has emphasised, preparations should be made far in advance of any actual movement, and should focus on preserving both physical and financial security, and cultural norms. Basic housing and life-supporting infrastructure must be planned.

Equally important, the political relationships between displaced nationals and host states would need to be resolved, addressing communities’ relationship with host nations as well as their involvement in the planning process. The experience of Alaskan villagers’ resettlement in Newtok, where community leaders have successfully led the relocation process, as contrasted with less successful relocations of island populations in Chagosand elsewhere, suggests that community involvement is critical for the success of any relocation activity. This involvement is important largely because new communities must do more than provide housing; they should be structured to promote livelihoods and preserve critical familial and community bonds; and community leaders are best placed to structure their resettlement process accordingly.

To get ready for this changing world, small-island governments need to update existing institutions to prepare administratively for sea-level rise and possible relocation. At May’s conference, Justin Rose gave a summary of programmes under way to prepare island communities, including adaptation projects (such as planting and building defenses against saltwater inundation), educational schemes and more direct sets of incentives for good long-term planning. More of this should be done. In addition to community development, states will need to address property systems to account for changing landscapes, develop new budget priorities, establish targeted insurance regimes to allow for individual recovery and, above all, educate their populations in preparation for possible future resettlement.

However, at heart this is a global problem, and the burden to resolve these issues falls squarely on the world’s largest emitters. Through no fault of their own, entire civilisations could soon be lost to the ocean. These civilisations must attempt to ease the pain of any transition through legal innovations and active planning – but they will need help. And it is our moral duty as a society to help them prepare for the world to come.

Source: chinadialogue

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!

Contents include the following:

• A Decision Framework for Environmentally Induced Migration
• Multidimensional Re-creation of Vulnerabilities and Potential for Resilience in International Migration
• The Thin Line Between Choice and Flight: Environment and Migration in Rural Benin
• North-South Migration in Ghana: What Role for the Environment?
• Economic or Environmental Migration? The Push Factors in Niger
• Flooding and Relocation: The Zambezi River Valley in Mozambique
• Western Sahara: Migration, Exile and Environment
• Environmental Degradation and Migration on Hispaniola Island
• Drought Triggered Temporary Migration in an East Indian Village
• Migration and Displacement Triggered by Floods in the Mekong Delta
• Contrasted Views on Environmental Change and Migration: the Case of Tuvaluan Migration to New Zealand

Download each article free here.

However, experts warn there is a possibility that sea levels will rise in the delta region around Can Tho due to climate change, causing devastating floods that will displace millions and destroy those crops.

Can Tho is in the wider Mekong Delta, a rice-growing region that spans southern Vietnam and is home to 18 million people. More than half of Vietnam’s rice is produced in the delta, as well as 60 percent of its fish and shrimp.

A 1m sea-level rise could displace more than seven million residents of the Mekong delta, and a 2m sea-level rise could double that number, according to a study by the Columbia University Center for International Earth Science Information Network in New York, the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), and other groups.

The delta is where the Mekong River divides into nine channels after a 5,000km journey from the Tibetan plateau. It is “particularly susceptible” to sea-level rises, says Alex de Sherbinin, a senior research associate at the Columbia University Center. A 1m sea-level rise is “definitely within the bounds” of happening this century, he told IRIN. A 2m sea-level rise, however, is less likely.

The study examined the major deltas of the world, and was based on current patterns of climate change and migration for glacier melt, as well as interviews with displaced residents.

According to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), considered the most authoritative group on the topic, millions of people in deltas in Vietnam, Bangladesh and Egypt will be directly affected by sea-level rises by the end of this century.

Bracing for changes

Although Vietnam has always been vulnerable to adverse weather, climate change “is making the hazards worse”, says Koos Neefjes, a climate change policy adviser to the UN Development Programme (UNDP) in Vietnam.

Recent climate change in Vietnam is beyond the level of natural change, argues a 2009 report by by the UN Environment Programme. In the past 50 years, temperatures have increased by 0.05-0.20 degrees Celsius, and sea level has increased by 2-4 cm per decade, the report warns.

In the past 15 years, the country has experienced severe floods, although they are caused by a combination of factors, including deforestation and typhoons.

In 2000 and 2001, the worst torrents in recent history killed more than 500 people, many of them children. Significant tracts of farmland were inundated for months, destroying their crop-growing capabilities.

“There is time to handle that additional threat from climate change,” Neefjes told IRIN. “In a sense it is more urgent to address the development gap, the threats that have existed for years and that make this country in many parts not safe enough.”

Living with floods

The government has a policy called “living with floods” that tries to maximize good effects and minimize the bad effects of floods – rather than ending them through measures deemed too costly.

“A flood adaptation policy is better than eliminating them,” said Vo Thanh Danh, a researcher at the Institute of Climate Change Study at Cantho University. “Even floods bring more benefits than losses if we can live with and adapt to floods.”

Since 1998, authorities have been trying to relocate 200,000 households – about one million people – to less flood-prone areas.

The programme also tries to promote behavioural changes, such as encouraging villagers to switch to aquaculture from agriculture. Authorities have been teaching children to swim and equipping them with buoys. They are also constructing food compartments in ceilings that stay dry during floods, along with fresh water storage facilities.

Mekong delta residents are using rice varieties that can withstand fluctuations in water level and salinity. Still, much more work is needed, Neefjes said. “City planning must expand into better places, [such as higher ground].”

Without dyke reinforcements and improved drainage, a 1m rise in sea levels along the coast of Vietnam would inundate 5.3 percent of Vietnam’s total land area, reveals a 2010 government report.

Of that total, the sea-level rise could swamp more than 80 percent of the Mekong Delta, 9 percent in the Red River Delta in northern Vietnam, and 4 percent each in the north-central coast and southeast regions – an area that includes Ho Chi Minh City, the country’s largest metropolis of 7.1 million people.

Source: IRIN

Photo: David Gough/IRIN

Climate displacement has arrived without mercy in Bangladesh. In Khulna district alone, some 60,000 Bangladeshi citizens have fled what has become permanent coastal flooding in the remote southwest of the country. With no option of returning home, and little access to new land thus far, these climate displaced persons (CDPs) are forced to survive on a 25 kilometre long, 2m high and 3-4 m wide embankment.

This desperate community in Dacope sub-district in Khulna has built rudimentary, makeshift shelters along the length of the levee that was originally designed to protect their now destroyed villages, land and homes. The levee failed, and all they now have are insecure and instable shelters perched precariously atop the embankment, surrounded by unruly water on both sides at high tide and at low tide by thousands of hectares of desolate muddy land that was once fertile paddy and farmland.

Living in this isolated and impoverished corner of Bangladesh, which borders on the famous Sundarban National Park, and completely segregated from political life in Dhaka (and the officials that could assist them in finding new land), the people of the delta see all too little hope or viable options for the future. Ninety-per cent of the CDPs are now without livelihoods, forced to live day by day from aid handouts and are unable to return to lives, land and homes that were completely obliterated by coastal erosion and storm surges. Nor do the displaced in Dacope see any solutions coming from the Government of Bangladesh any time soon, with officials seeming thus far resistant to suggestions that they may need to assist this and other climate-affected communities to relocate to safer areas and provide them with new land.

And as bad as things may be for the delta dwellers, this CDP community is only the tip of the displacement iceberg eating away at Bangladesh’s land and populace. Comprehensive surveys carried out in 2010 by over 200 community-based organisations and coordinated by the remarkable efforts of the Association of Climate Refugees, found that a staggering 6.5 million citizens (1.3 million households) of Bangladesh have already been displaced by the effects of climate change.

Uniquely vulnerable to frequent and severe river, rainwater and tidal flooding, Bangladesh today has the sad distinction of being the world’s most vulnerable country to climate displacement. While climate scientists, the international community and academics vigorously debate about the potential for climate change to affect future population displacement, the millions of Bangladeshi citizens already displaced by the effects of climate change are no longer simply waiting for solutions to their plight, and have begun to organise for climate justice and their basic human rights.

For them the worst-case future climate scenarios have already arrived; for them the future is now.

Earth’s most climate vulnerable communities

Bangladesh is a low lying, largely flat country with two-thirds of the country located less than 5m above sea level. Situated in the delta region of three of the world’s largest rivers – with a combined annual discharge second only to that of the Amazon – it is no surprise that Bangladesh suffers from catastrophic floods every year. According to government statistics, 25 per cent of Bangladesh is inundated every year and 60 per cent of the country suffers from severe flooding every 4-5 years. What makes the situation so dire now is that the flooded land in the delta is seemingly gone for good. In Khulna, the flood will simply not recede.

And yet, this is far from the extent of climate vulnerability in Bangladesh. The country is also hit by a severe tropical cyclone on average once every three years. These storms form in the months before and after the monsoon season and intensify as they move over the warm waters of the Bay of Bengal. They are accompanied by winds of up to 150kph and can result in storm surges of up to several metres. As experienced by the 60,000 people crammed in miserable conditions on the embankments of Khulna, the results for housing, land, property and livelihoods are devastating.

Of the 160 million citizens of Bangladesh, it is the more than 50 million people who live in the most extreme poverty that are and will continue to be most affected by climate change. These are the people who are forced to live in remote, exposed and vulnerable locations – often on river islands and cyclone prone coastal regions – where the land is cheap but the risks are high. Of Bangladesh’s 64 districts, 24 are already severely affected by growing numbers of climate displaced persons.

As sure as the effects of climate change are in devastating lives and communities in Bangladesh today, it is also clear that the devastation is only going to increase in the future. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicts that floods, tropical cyclones and storm surges will all become more frequent and more severe in the future due to the effects of climate change. The IPCC also forecasts even higher flows in the rivers that flow into Bangladesh from India, Nepal, Bhutan and China – as a direct result of increasing monsoon rainfalls and the melting of the Himalayan glaciers. Sea level rise as a result of global warming will also result in even more severe coastal flooding in Bangladesh as well as saline intrusion into rivers across the entire southern regions of the country.

The need for solutions to climate displacement

While the full impact of future climate change is notoriously difficult to accurately predict, it is clear that the 6.5 million climate displaced people in Bangladesh in January 2011 will be joined by many millions more in the future. The effects on communities and the devastation of lands and homes will only become more intense. It is clear that the future is not bright for the people of Bangladesh and equally that land-based solutions are required now.

As poor as they may be, under human rights law, these impoverished and marginalised communities are also the people most in need of having their housing, land and property rights respected, protected and fulfilled. Combined efforts to tackle the challenges of climate displacement with a renewed commitment to HLP rights just might hold out the best hope that CDP’s will a secured a future worth living. And this is precisely what the joint Bangladesh HLP Initiative of Displacement Solutions and the Association of Climate Refugees intends to do.

Despite the considerable efforts of the Bangladeshi Government to combat and address the effects of climate change – including the adoption of the 2005 Bangladesh National Adaptation Programme of Action and the 2009 Bangladesh Climate Change Strategy and Action Plan – the Government has yet to propose clear or practical land-based solutions for addressing the plight of Bangladesh’s current and future climate displaced people.
Though one of the pillars of the Bangladesh Climate Change Action plan is to ‘ensure that the poorest and most vulnerable in society are protected from climate change’, it is clear that the climate displaced communities living on the embankment in Khulna province and indeed the many millions more across Bangladesh, have thus far received all too little protection, safe housing, or access to basic services from the Government.

Enter the Association for Climate Refugees

Some 200 community-based NGOs throughout the country have recently banded together to form the Association of Climate Refugees (ACR) and to actively find solutions for the citizens of Bangladesh who have already been displaced by climate change. ACR’s founder and director, Muhammad Abu Musa, has chosen for himself one of the world’s more difficult tasks. For this jolly and remarkably optimistic 52 year-old Bangladeshi activist has dedicated his life in recent years towards the gargantuan goal of finding permanent and sustainable residential solutions to the millions of climate displaced people across Bangladesh. If predictions by the IPCC and others are correct, the sprightly Abu Musa will need to find new homes for a further 30 million displaced people in the coming years.

The ACR is focusing on capacity building and empowerment at the local level – directly among the climate affected communities themselves. ACR relies on partner organisations – grassroots activists in 24 of the countries 64 districts, often working out of a single room in the middle of affected communities, to promptly relay first hand information about any developments in climate affected communities.

Abu Musa believes that it is the affected communities themselves who have the best knowledge and resources for self-protection and adaptation. He also strongly believes that having local communities own the problem is the only way for the Government of Bangladesh to listen to their plight – ‘If we showed up as an NGO describing this problem, the Government door would be immediately closed, it is essential that the local communities take action themselves’, he says with conviction.

The ACR plans to continue its work of monitoring climate displacement across Bangladesh and in the near future to implement a system of both emergency and permanent relocation out of climate vulnerable locations together with their international partners, in particular Displacement Solutions. ACR is aware that some CDPs have relocated to the distant Chittagong Hill Tracts (some 600 kms from Khulna), and in January 2011, ACR acquired a small land plot of 1.65 acres in Kamarkhola Union in Khulna district, donated by a local landowner sympathetic to ACR’s aims.

The land represents the first such acquisition of land for climate affected communities, and will be transformed into a community land trust aptly named ‘Community Land Trust for Climate Displacement Solutions in Bangladesh’. This symbolic gesture, which will provide land solutions for some twenty families, will surely not resolve climate displacement in the country, but will hopefully inspire other landowners to donate larger pieces of unused land to assist in finding solutions to the dismal displaced population of Bangladesh.

Abu Musa and many others believe that the climate displacement solution for Bangladesh will frequently lie in relocation to safer areas, and not solely on building higher and higher embankment walls. Many of the 60,000 people on the embankment in Khulna province expect that in the next monsoon season the entire embankment will be under water and that they will have to move again. Accessing new and viable land will be the secret to ACR’s success.

What will the future hold?

The work of ACR is admirable and essential, but alone it is unlikely to be able to find land-based solutions for the climate-displaced people of Bangladesh. Similar to popular movements in other climate affected countries such as Tulele Peisa in Papua New Guinea, path breaking groups like ACR need to be able to work with much more than their currently meagre, shoestring budget. Funds from the newly established Green Fund under the Cancun Adaptation Framework (meant to reach 100 billion USD in coming years) need to be earmarked for groups such as ACR and Tulele Peisa to enable them to resolve the displacement caused by climate change.

It is essential for these groups and governments to band together to develop and clarify land-based solutions as rapidly as possible, before the already drastic situation becomes exponentially worse as the effects of climate change become more severe and more frequent.

Importantly, it is increasingly clear that the imperative to resolve climate displacement in Bangladesh is not only a matter of human dignity and human rights, but also one of security. The marginalised communities most affected by climate change may also be the most susceptible to influence by extremists. As a country with a large Muslim population, thus far largely spared the fundamentalist-driven ravages now so commonplace in Pakistan and elsewhere, some analysts have noted that the most disenfranchised and affected communities could turn to Islamic militantism – and transform Bangladesh into another breeding ground for violent fundamentalism.

Unless climate displaced persons are treated as the rights-holders that they actually already are, and enabled to access new housing, land and property, this looming security threat may become ever more real.

The international community now has an opportunity to address the immediate and future climate displacement crisis in Bangladesh. The world needs to capture the momentum of recent positive developments at the 2010 United Nations Climate Change Conference held in Cancun, where national, regional and international coordination and cooperation was encouraged in implementing planned relocation of climate displaced communities and where it was stated that human rights should be fully respected in all climate change related actions.

States across the globe should take heed of the climate displacement nightmare that is unfolding in Bangladesh, and at the same time focus on the emerging dream of durable land solutions for all. Land-based solutions to climate displacement can and should be identified now, and excellent community led groups – such as the Association for Climate Refugees – need to be sufficiently well resourced to be able to implement emergency and permanent relocation strategies. The Government of Bangladesh should also be encouraged – through bilateral, regional and international advocacy – to do more to respect the human rights of all people in Bangladesh, including the 6.5 million people already displaced by climate change.

The development of a National Plan to Resolve Climate Displacement, prepared jointly with civil society groups such as ACR, could go a long way to ensure a brighter future for the displaced millions in this country. The situation in Bangladesh is as clear a demonstration to the world as any that contrary to what many people still think, climate displacement is not a problem for the future – for 2020, or 2030 or 2050 – it is a problem now, and one that urgently requires solutions.

Source: The Ecologist