Sunnier Side of the Street

Climate Change Impact on Forced Migration

credit: Christian Aid

There was near-unanimity among the speakers that runaway climate change is likely to have a devastating effect on the numbers of people forced to abandon their homes, often for an uncertain and dispossessed future. A range of exciting solutions were also discussed, all of which hinge on the political will to implement them.

Harsh Reality for IDPs

The UN estimates there are already around 10 million refugees globally. To this needs to be added the far higher numbers of people (up to 155 million according to some sources) classified as "internally displaced" — displaced within the borders of their own country (Christian Aid).

As several speakers pointed out, the lot of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) is particularly harsh. With no formal status in international law, agencies such as the UN have no obligation to protect them, a responsibility legally left to state governments, who in some cases have forced their displacement in the first place.

Refugees and IDPs are fleeing a range of crises: political, economic, and environmental; in many cases a combination of the three. Some estimates indicate that up to 105 million people globally have been displaced by "development" projects alone. Typical victims are indigenous groups forcibly moved from their land to make way for large-scale "modernizing" projects.

Professor Michael Cernea, former World Bank resettlement specialist, reports that the 60 million people in India displaced by development projects since 1950 have been "simply left to fend for themselves without assistance from the state that displaced them" (Cernea).

Such communities, already vulnerable, are likely to face further displacement with the onset of highly destabilizing environmental events caused by climate change such as decreased rainfall, flooding, and desertification. The IPCC estimates that up to a billion people could be displaced by 2050 if we do nothing to halt, and reverse, the amount of carbon in the atmosphere (Vidal).

Conflict, Drought, and Displacement

The IPPR gathered a highly impressive range of speakers, including Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Hilary Benn, UK secretary of state for the environment, Lord Nicholas Stern, Chair of the Stern Review, Craig Johnstone, Deputy High Commissioner of UNHCR and Jean Lambert, MEP, spokesperson on forced migration for the European Parliament Green Group.

Pachauri pointed out that with a temperature rise of between 1.5 and 2.5 degree Celsius precipitation in the North would rise, but in the Mediterranean and the South it would decrease, leading to lowering yields for rain-fed agriculture. Most of the victims are, therefore, likely to be in the South.

Benn highlighted three areas as particular cause for concern: the Middle East, East Africa, and regions, including Bangladesh, whose rivers are fed by Himalayan glaciers. People in these parts of the world will be subject to an especially vicious circle.

Already impoverished by decades of unequal treatment in national and global economies, their capacity to respond robustly to shocks to their livelihoods such as flooding and drought is severely curtailed. Consequently, the effects of climate change will be felt far more acutely than if adequate infrastructure was in place to protect them.

Many speakers drew attention to Darfur as a key example of the role of climate change in conflict and displacement. Lydia Poole, formerly with UNOCHA, reported that up to 4 million people have been displaced in Sudan, and in the Darfur region, the number of displaced people (estimated to be 2 million) is set to rise.

Underpinning much of the conflict is a fight for scarce land and water resources in an environment subject to repeated cycles of drought. For fragile agro-pastoralist communities, the effects of conflict, drought, and displacement on their well-being is devastating, if not lethal.

IDPs fare particularly badly. Totally dependent on food aid, yet without the formal right to enter UN camps, and with little hope of going home, these people are the top priority for relief agencies working in the region.

But, such protection as they do receive is very fragile. Many agencies fear they may be forced to leave the region as fighting intensifies and spreads to neighboring countries such as Chad. In addition, the World Food Programme budget is likely to fall significantly over the next two years as food prices increase.

Mohamed Adow, from Northern Aid in Kenya, spoke eloquently about how this cycle of conflict, drought, and displacement, is a problem for pastoralists across East Africa. He highlighted how acute the problem of restrictive national borders is for nomadic people forced to move on because of drought.

Whereas traditionally vast areas of the region were available for people and their livestock to move across, national borders prevent people easily crossing from Kenya to Somalia or Uganda, or vice versa.

The result is frequently devastating. Forced to end up in peri-urban or urban environments, dependent on kin networks, traditional ways of surviving quickly break down and become impossible to recover. The result is ever-swelling numbers of dispossessed people living on the margins of large cities with few available coping strategies.

Potential Solutions

A range of potential solutions to these problems were discussed. Johnstone pointed out that while the international community is well prepared for immediate disaster relief, we need coordinated long-term strategies for dealing with climate-change-induced large-scale migration.

Nicolas Stern highlighted the need for more available data so we can model regional risks more accurately as a basis for effective responses. The issue of borders as a constraint for those forced to migrate loomed large. In the conference summation, it was suggested that there is an urgent need for universal protection status for all those displaced within their own national borders.

However, as Adow argued, the only response that would effectively combat the effects of climate change on vulnerable communities is a concerted, integrated, and properly funded development strategy that takes account of people's needs on the ground.

The world simply cannot afford 200 million displaced people, let alone up to a billion, when there are cost-effective solutions available to prevent it. This view was echoed by many of the speakers.

Everyone agreed the rich world, as the perpetrator of climate change, has to take the lead on implementing and paying for these solutions, including for those doomed to suffer its effects. As yet, however, there is little evidence to suggest the rich world is prepared to foot the bill, either of climate change mitigation or adaptation.

Indeed, many current global responses, such as the switch to biofuels, are making the problem worse: forcing up food prices, forcing people off their land, and denuding precious carbon sinks in the process.

Pachauri argued that we need to channel a small but significant part of global gross domestic product (about 3 percent) into mitigation and adaptation strategies. These strategies include the development of decentralized economies, investing in renewables and building communities' capacities to adapt.

Indeed, Pachauri was adamant: We have no other choice. We have to do this substantively and we have to do it fast — by 2030 at the latest — if we are to avoid the worst climate change could bring, especially for those least able to withstand its effects.

Sources:

Cernea, M. "Development-Induced and Conflict-Induced IDPs: Bridging the Research Divide." Forced Migration Review. Dec. 2006. Accessed 5 June 2008.

"Human Tide: The Real Migration Crisis." Christian Aid. May 2007

Vidal, John. "Climate Change to Force Mass Migration." The Guardian. 14 May 2007. Accessed 5 June 2008.

Kate Prendergast is a British freelance writer with an interest in issues of sustainability, culture and development. She holds a PhD in archaeology. Your e-mails will be forwarded to her by contacting the editor at ScienceTech@islam-online.net.