Collectif Argos: Climate Refugees

Climate change and human migration: Perspectives for environmentally sustainable societies

“Climate Refugees”—A Useful Concept?

<p>Climate and environmental changes as drivers of human migration likely reach back to the rise and decline of ancient civilizations in the Mediterranean Basin. At present, there is evidence of such changes and their impacts to cause risks for human security in the Mediterranean region particularly in its southern and eastern rim countries. Discussions on the relationships between climate change, conflicts, and human migration include framing these as potential threat multipliers, e.g., climate change-induced water shortages, which will lead to food insecurity and may thereby intensify conflicts and ultimately internal and cross-border migration. Most accounts anticipate these threat multipliers to occur in countries that are particularly vulnerable to climate change, lack adequate adaptive capacity, and be exposed to multiple socio-ecological stressors. Against the background of existing socio-political and armed conflicts in the Eastern and Southern Mediterranean, this risk deserves further scholarly attention. Inadequate or missing political instruments or agreements to deal with conflicts, insufficient cross-border collaboration, and limited links to international frameworks exacerbate the challenges faced by local communities in this region. These factors have likely contributed to the internal and cross-border migration of large groups of populations in war-torn countries in the Mediterranean Basin and elsewhere.</p><p>Despite strong evidence for links between climate change and its consequences for water, food, and economic security, there is still significant debate as to the relative importance of them for individual decisions to migrate. Equally contested are propositions addressing a possible direct causal relationship between climate change impacts or climate variability and violent conflict. In addressing these issues, it quickly becomes clear that the relationships between climate and environmental changes, conflicts, and human migration are multi-causal and are characterized by complex interactions and feedbacks. Key determinants likely include the social, political, cultural, and economic conditions of a specific country or region as well as their historical trajectory.</p><p>The Mediterranean Expert Group on Environmental and Climate Change (MedECC) has embarked on addressing these challenging issues through a Special Report that follows the First Mediterranean Assessment Report of MedECC (MAR1; 2019). Major issues to be addressed include:</p><p>(i) how can we identify current “hot spots” of climate change impacts and ongoing or emerging conflicts;</p><p>(ii) how can we shed light on understanding the roles of different determinants on internal and cross-border migration, particularly with regard to a) migration linked directly and/or indirectly to environmental change and conflicts, b) migration linked to other determinants, and c) understanding the relationships and interdependencies of different determinants;</p><p>(iii) what are major knowledge gaps and what approaches should be followed to address them?</p><p>While the “Task Force on Migration” of the Eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East - Cyprus Climate Change Initiative has already discussed strategies and policy instruments to enhance adaptation to climate change, the MedECC Special Report will refine and complete such assessment by considering the links between climate change, conflicts, and migration based on existing adaptation measures.</p><p>This paper will provide background and rationale for the MedECC Special Report, its present state, and perspectives on its continued development.</p>

Expanding the Duty to Rescue to Climate Migration

Climate change is a security problem in as much as the kinds of environmental changes that may result pose risks to peace and development. However, responsibilities for the causes of climate change, vulnerability to its effects, and capacity to solve the problem, are not equally distributed between countries, classes and cultures. There is no uniformity in the geopolitics of climate change, and this impedes solutions.

It is now widely recognized that climate change will reconfigure our physical and social landscapes in ways that we are just beginning to understand, and that it will directly and indirectly influence human migration patterns across geographic regions and the socio-economic spectrum. Exactly how climate change will affect migration, what climate-related migration will look like, and how scholars might go about studying it, however, remain points of contention. In this chapter, we identify some key threads in the burgeoning literature on climate change and human migration, including the influence of climate change on migration decisions and patterns, the challenges of empirically measuring and predicting the scale of climate migration, the likely patterns climate migration will take, and some of the looming governance and human rights questions posed by climate migration. Additionally, because both climate change and migration occur within a dynamic and highly unequal social, political, and economic landscape, we highlight some of the ways in which some communities are rendered more vulnerable than others in the face of both climate change and climate migration, as well as the ways in which such vulnerability is produced and perpetuated.

The authors develop the hypothesis that aversion to risk rather than expectations of higher income is the primary motivation for rural-urban migration in developing countries. This hypothesis maintains that an optimizing risk-averse small-farmer family will try to place a family member in the urban sector in order to diversify its income portfolio. An additional hypothesis related to risk is also considered at the individual rather than the family level. (ANNOTATION)

Climate change will fundamentally affect the lives of millions of people who will be forced over the next decades to leave their villages and cities to seek refuge in other areas. Although the exact numbers of climate refugees are unknowable and vary from assessment to assessment depending on underlying methods, scenarios, time frames, and assumptions (as laid out below), the available literature indicates that the climate refugee crisis will surpass all known refugee crises in terms of the number of people affected. Many climate refugees may seek refuge in their own countries; others will need to cross borders to find a new home. Some local refugee crises, in particular in the richer countries in the North, may be prevented through adaptation measures such as reinforced coastal protection or changes in agricultural production and water supply management. Many poorer countries, however, are unlikely to be able to initiate sufficient adaptation programmes, and climate-induced migration might be the only option for many communities in the South. In these situations, climate refugees will need to rely on effective protection and support from the international community, regardless of whether climate migration is internal or transnational.

Waiting for the wave, but missing the tide: Case studies of climate-related (im)mobility and health

The climate change migration/displacement is a crisis moment for humanity in the contemporary world that has been impacting the geopolitical and sociocultural trajectory of the nation-states. Countries have been reordering their geoeconomic dynamics and foreign policy semantics while taking into account the climate change and its impacts. Climate change is destined to produce an unprecedented displaced population that could be measurable to the traditional refugee-like conditions regarding vulnerability and victimhood that would suffer from natural resources and reserve crunch. The climate change-induced displacement and human migration need a response under international refugee law and international climate change law frameworks. Thus, the development of climate change law and protection of CDPs thereunder has to be located by examining the UNFCCC, the Kyoto Protocol, the Paris Agreement and appreciating the legal principles of COPs in response to the climate migration. At the same time, the legal protections under refugee law limitations thereof and application of human rights law, country of origin and host state responsibilities have also been addressed by an advocacy for an alternative regional or international legal regime on climate refugees. Therefore, the instant chapter addresses the extent of protection granted to climate-displaced people under refugee law, climate change law and human rights law. The chapter discusses the complex legal issues associated with climate change-induced displacement and analyses the existing legal protection for climate change displacement under international law. The first part of the chapter makes an attempt to identify the inherent provisions to address the issue of climate change displacement under the international climate change law. The second part of the chapter addresses the question, whether the climate change-induced displacement could be categorized as political refugees and whether the issue of climate displacement could be attended and addressed under the existing refugee law framework.

Визначено основні причини та особливості прояву процесу глобального потепління й зміни клімату. Охарактеризовано природні та антропогенні фактори, які впливають на глобальне потепління й зміни клімату. Наведено приклади кліматичних змін у різних регіонах світу, охарактеризовано їх наслідки. Проаналізовано вплив глобального потепління та змін клімату на міграційні процеси у світі. Розглянуто різні підходи щодо того, як називати людей, котрі переміщуються через кліматичні зміни: кліматичні мігранти, екологічні мігранти, кліматичні біженці, біженці через зміни клімату. Акцентовано увагу на тому, що міграційні процеси, які відбуваються через глобальне потепління й зміни клімату, пов’язані, передусім, із внутрішніми переміщеннями людей. А щоб бути біженцем, потрібно перебувати за межами своєї країни проживання, тому кліматичними біженцями, або біженцями через зміни клімату, їх вважати не можна. Наведено приклади прогнозів експертів щодо кліматичних мігрантів як у випадку погіршення ситуації зі зміною клімату, так і у випадку її покращення. Проаналізовано основні нормативно-правові документи щодо боротьби з глобальним потеплінням та змінами клімату. Охарактеризовано діяльність світового співтовариства щодо обмеження зростання глобальної температури й мінімізації наслідків зміни клімату. Наведено низку документів, які стосуються цієї проблеми. Як базовий документ, визначено Паризьку кліматичну угоду 2016 р., основна мета якої – утримати зростання середньої світової температури на значно нижчому рівні ніж +2°C і спрямувати зусилля на обмеження зростання температури до +1,5°C від доіндустріального рівня, а також розробити рекомендації щодо комплексних підходів для запобігання, мінімізації й усунення переміщень осіб, пов’язаних із несприятливими наслідками зміни клімату. Показано потребу негайного реагування на зміни клімату та консолідацію зусиль усіх членів світового співтовариства у відверненні такої загрози. Наведено приклади країн, які вже відчувають негативні наслідки глобального потепління й для яких характерні кліматичні мігранти.

It has been projected that the single greatest impact of environmental changes will be on human migration and displacement. Migration has been extensively discussed and documented as an adaptation strategy in response to environmental changes, and more recently, to climate change. However, forced relocation will lead to the displacement of people, and although much has been written about it, very little has been documented from the Pacific Islands perspective, especially by communities that were forced to relocate as a result of colonialism and those that have been forced to migrate today as a result of climate change impacts. Using the Gilbertese resettlement from the Phoenix Islands to the Solomon Islands, in particular, Wagina Island in the 1960s as a case study of forced relocation and displacement of Pacific Islands people during the colonial period, this paper aims to underline some of the important lessons that can be learned from this historical case to inform the present and future challenges of climate change migration and displacement. Without dismissing migration as a coping strategy, the paper argues that the forced relocation of people from their home islands as a result of climate change will lead to displacement. It accentuates that in the case of Pacific Islands, forced relocation will lead to displacement if they are forced to leave their land because of their deep relationship and attachment to it. The paper also emphasizes the need to acknowledge and honor Pacific Islands’ voices and perceptions in discourses on climate change migration and displacement at national, regional and international forums.

Climate migration is plagued by vagueness, both in terms of the numbers of potential migrants as well as their legal rights. There is sizeable literature that examines whatever link might exist between climate change in its broad sense – including sudden acute climatic disasters1 such as the Indian Ocean Tsunami of 2004 and Hurricane Katrina – and forced human migration.2 Although the literature suggests a link between climate change and forced migration, it is equally apparent that the composite of climate migration is a nebulous concept, given the multiplicity of causes that lead to human migration.3 That is to say, it is not clear – save for extreme cases such as the submersion or otherwise disappearance of inhabited territory – to what extent climate change is singly the cause of forced migration. That there may be a link between climate change and forced migration is less doubtful than the degree and directness of causality between these. For instance, climate change may lead to forced migration in the following way: environmental degradation may decimate existing resources or increase competition for these;4 this may then lead to armed conflict, which, in turn,

South Asia has been witnessing an earth-shattering humanitarian crisis of migration and forced displacement due to unparalleled global, regional and internal disturbances resulting in systematic and gross transgressions of the global human rights mandate, international humanitarian law obligations and climate change law norms. There are more than 3 million refugees in South Asia, and 90% out of them are victims and product of intra-regional migration. The SAARC jurisdictions are both refugee-producing and refugee-hosting nation-states. Pakistan has been hosting the most massive refugees of Afghan origin; India is home to the diverse groups of intra- and extra-regional refugees including latest addition of Rohingya refugees, and rest of the SAARC nations are also bracing the refugee crises in the region, and the crisis is further compounded by the returnees from the Global North countries. Among the SAARC jurisdictions, there is a problem of negative attitude towards refugees based on preposterous political indoctrination. The instant chapter examines the relevance of refugee crisis to regional collaboration and advocates for a regional institution to address the crisis while critically evaluating the role of the SAARC in protecting the rights of climate change-induced displaced persons. The needs of the SAARC countries have galvanized an understanding to address the complexity of the climate change migration by adopting a SAARC Climate Declaration and an Action Plan on Climate Change. Therefore, the SAARC is gradually ushering in the climate change field. However, the institution is structurally and politically weak. The matters get further dimmer as the position of countries in SAARC varies regarding climate change refugees with Maldives and Bangladesh expressing opinion in favour of their recognition and protection. Primarily, the chapter tries to identify the climate change consciousness and challenges in South Asia and climate law responses of the SAARC by espousing the hybrid integration of international legal norms with regional aspirations. It recognizes the need for regional trans-boundary cooperation to address the climate change displacement and migration and makes a case for the advocacy for an alternative regional regime on climate refugees.

World population will reach an estimated nine billion by 2050. Given this factor and continued economic development in today's low-income countries, the total global demand for food will increase approximately threefold over the coming half-century. Meanwhile, against this background, newly-occurring global environmental changes such as climate change are anticipated to affect food production. Other incipient large-scale environmental changes likely to affect food production include stratospheric O3 depletion, the accelerating loss of biodiversity (with knock-on effects on crop and livestock pest species) and the perturbation of several of the great elemental cycles of N and S. The ways in which these various environmental influences affect the production of food (crops and livestock on land, and wild and cultivated fisheries) are complex and interactive. Uncertainties therefore persist about how global climate change is likely to affect world and regional food production. On balance, recent modelling-based estimates indicate that, in the medium to longer term, if not over the next several decades, climate change is likely to affect crop yields adversely, especially in food-insecure regions. The prospect of increased climatic variability further increases the risks to future food production. Given these possible though uncertain adverse impacts of climatic and other environmental changes on world food production, there is a need to apply the Precautionary Principle. There are finite, and increasingly evident, limits to agro-ecosystems and to wild fisheries. Our capacity to maintain food supplies for an increasingly large and increasingly expectant world population will depend on maximising the efficiency and sustainability of production methods, incorporating socially-beneficial genetic biotechnologies, and taking pre-emptive action to minimise detrimental ecologically-damaging global environmental changes.