CLIMATE DISPLACEMENT IN THE NEWS
WFP Executive Director David Beasley has emphasized that the food crisis “is not because of war or conflict, this is because of climate change.” Madagascar’s global share of emissions is only 0.01%, yet the people there are currently experiencing some of the worst effects.
Joris Beugels via UNSPLASH
The Canadian government’s failure to take meaningful action on climate change is putting Indigenous groups at risk of food shortages and poor nutrition, especially those in remote locations. A report by Human Rights Watch finds that habitat loss and extreme weather are major drivers of depleted traditional food sources, and nutritious food flown into communities remains too expensive.
Despite the Trudeau government’s commitments to be a leader on climate and advance the recognition of Indigenous People’s rights, Northern Canada is warming at a rate well above the global average. Provincial and territorial governments were also criticized in the report, which recommended stronger emissions reduction strategies as well as greater technical and financial assistance to communities facing negative impacts of climate change.
One of the key implications of HRW’s report, which studied three different remote First Nations communities in Ontario, Yukon, and British Columbia, is that climate change is compounding already poor outcomes among Indigenous Peoples. For example, increasingly scarce traditional food sources are being supplemented by lower quality, less nutritious food brought in from elsewhere, which only worsens health outcomes stemming from centuries of marginalization and oppression. These intertwined issues are particularly concerning in the context of a global pandemic, in which poor health outcomes undermine coping mechanisms traditionally used to manage extreme events.
"The horrible irony is that we have contributed very little to climate change but are facing the biggest impacts" - Vern Cheechoo, director of lands and resources at Mushkegowuk Council, which represents seven Cree First Nations in northern Ontario
In addition, this report highlights yet another example of how governments, even those that outwardly support the issues at hand, often fail to adequately include their most vulnerable constituents in discussions and policymaking. This means that even communities who take matters into their own hands, such as implementing food sharing networks and regional monitoring systems, are left with inadequate support.
Worryingly, the findings of this latest report mainly echo previous warnings. Over a year ago, Canada’s environment watchdog found the government’s lack of progress on emissions reduction “disturbing” just days after Environment Canada’s scientists issued a warning regarding Canada’s rapid rate of warming compared to the rest of the planet. (Reuters, CBC)
Photo by Amali Tower
At a UN Security Council meeting on conflict-induced food insecurity and the risk of famine in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), northeast Nigeria, Yemen and South Sudan, WFP Executive Director David Beasley said the the COVID-19 pandemic had compounded widespread food insecurity caused by years of conflict, which now combined with conflict and climate change, meant that “the 270 million people marching toward the brink of starvation need our help more than ever,” adding that 2021 was a “make or break year.”
He urged billionaires and businesses to step up to help save 30 million people at risk of starvation who need $.4.9 billion in aid for one year.
“Worldwide, there are over 2,000 billionaires with a net worth of $8 trillion. In my home country, the USA, there are 12 individuals alone worth $1 trillion.”
“In fact, reports state that three of them made billions upon billions during COVID. I am not opposed to people making money, but humanity is facing the greatest crisis any of us have seen in our lifetimes.”
“It’s time for those who have the most to step up, to help those who have the least in this extraordinary time in world history. To show you truly love your neighbor,” Beasley said. “The world needs you right now and it’s time to do the right thing.”
WFP fears more people may die from hunger, resulting from economic impacts of the pandemic via lockdowns and lost jobs than the virus itself, which has now infected more than 30 million people and killed nearly 1 million people.
WFP warns 20 million are severely food insecure in Yemen and a further 3 million may face starvation due to COVID-19. South Sudan, where a path to peace was hoped, is now facing renewed violence and floods in Jonglei State, and millions are at risk in Nigeria, Burkina Faso and more.
The UN Security Council was briefed on September 17, via videoconference, by the UN Under-Secretary for Humanitarian Affairs Mark Lowcock and the Director-General of FAO Qu Dongyu, in addition to Beasley, following a “Note by the Secretariat” by Lowcock, required by Security Council resolution 2417, warning of food insecurity, including the risk of famine, as a result of conflict, in these four countries.
The note highlighted that food security has been exacerbated by natural disasters, economic shocks and public health crises, all compounded by the COVID-19 pandemic. It also highlighted the severe flooding over the last two years in South Sudan that destroyed 11,000 tons of cereals and affected 14 million livestock.
In a briefing on Yemen the previous day, Lowcock signaled frustration over severe funding shortfalls in all four countries. (VOA, CNBC, What’s In Blue)
Pablo Garcia Saldaña via UNSPLASH
The UN, in partnership with Kiribati, Tuvalu and the Marshall Islands, launched a USD $3.2 million UN Climate Security Project yesterday as part of the UN Secretary-General’s Peacebuilding Fund (PBF), and is the first multi-country project of its kind in the region.
The PBF is the UN financial instrument of first resort to sustain peace in countries and regions at risk of conflict or affected by conflict, including that caused by climate change.
The project will provide 24-months of support to assess and begin to address critical climate security challenges faced by these three countries, including displacement and forced migration, resulting from livelihood loss, food security, coastal erosion, increased social tensions linked to shrinking land and tenure, and industries such as fisheries, as well as the ever increasing costs of responding to worsening natural disasters.
In a quest to avert social conflict, the project will focus on tailored climate security assessments, including youth and gender-sensitive discussions and partnerships with key stakeholders. The project will be implemented by UNDP and IOM.
Khaled Khiari, the UN Assistant Secretary-General for Middle East, Asia and the Pacific from the Departments of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs and Peace Operations noted that “climate change in the Pacific has the potential to cause a myriad of cascading fragility and instability risks.”
The three country leaders echoed the harrowing climate change challenges each of their countries are facing, all of which are only two meters above sea-level at their highest points.
“This is about our survival, safety and security”
President of the Marshall Islands, H.E. David Kabua
Khiari noted the groundbreaking nature of the project, with which we certainly agree, and demonstrates the significant movement of the conversation of climate change to climate security within the UN security architecture, most notably within the UN Security Council, whose most recent debate on climate security was in July this year, and included a briefing by Pacific representative of the Climate Security Expert Network, covered in this Spotlight. (UNDP, FBC News)
Dave Herring/UNSPLASH
This author believes if continued to go unchecked, insecurity in the “water-food-energy” nexus will lead to political unrest, displacement and instability in the Middle East region. In the context of climate change and population demographics, a finite amount of water in the Middle East risks sustainable development, poverty and human survival. Water resources are critically low throughout the region with major aquifers overused. Add to that, drought in countries like Yemen and Syria, have contributed to steep declines in food production and conflict, and with it, displacement, which in turn has impacted production and cultivation. Years of conflict in Yemen has forced the import of basic food production, while Syria’s drought and displacement have impacted food security, and possibly contributed to the conflict.
Rural water supply is limited to springs, depleted these past 20 years due to agricultural irrigation in Oman, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, formerly the sixth largest wheat exporter. That water insecurity has driven rural to urban migration across many MENA countries, further straining crumbling public infrastructure.
Moving into renewable energies and reducing dependency on water-intensive sectors will be vital but the World Bank estimates it will cost $1 trillion by 2050. Water security can and is being pursued through recycling and desalination, with the MENA region accounting for half of the word’s desalination capacity. Recycling, though, is crucial, as the region fails to recycle 80% of wastewater. (The Arab Weekly)
Last summer, the United States Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration (PRM) announced a “new approach to address the impacts of climate change on migration and displacement”. The announcement emphasized the importance of developing “humane policies” and outlined the four principal objectives of the US in addressing the impacts of climate change on migration and displacement. While a promising sign, so far this “new approach” has resulted in little substantive change, all while the US struggles to implement coherent and effective immigration and climate policy.
Gaza is one of the world’s most densely populated places. A narrow strip of land only 141 sq. miles (365 sq. km.), it is home to 2.1 million Palestinians, 81 percent of whom are refugees. In addition to the humanitarian and political crises created by multiple years of recurring conflict, Gaza is also highly vulnerable to climate change. This includes experiencing more frequent and increased cold snaps in winter months and temperatures rising 20 percent faster than anywhere else in the world.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has examined the intersections of the environment, climate change and conflict extensively, and as the ICRC puts it, Gaza is “where the effects of climate change exacerbate serious humanitarian needs resulting from an unresolved conflict.”
Assistant High Commissioner for Protection Gillian Triggs said recently that while opening up the 1951 Refugee Convention to reform would be a risky step backwards, there was a “good case to be made” that a new protocol on climate refugees should be introduced.
The comments from one of UNHCR’s most senior officials come just a few months after a report by the UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights in the context of climate change highlighted the apparent reluctance of UN agencies on refugees and migration to provide a total assessment of the number of people displaced internationally as a result of climate change. In that report, Special Rapporteur Fry explicitly called for an optional protocol to the 1951 Convention, commenting that it would be logical for UNHCR to administer such a protocol in coordination with IOM and other relevant bodies.
Following an official visit to Honduras, UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights in the context of climate change, Ian Fry, is sounding the alarm about how climate change impacts are pushing many people to leave the Central American country.
Fry found that communities are facing prolonged droughts, severe flooding events, and coastal erosion and inundation due to climate change. These impacts are “forcing people to leave their homes and seek more sustainable livelihoods” elsewhere in order to avoid starvation and a lack of safe drinking water. Industries that provided stable livelihoods just a few years ago are now being swallowed by rising seas, creating “‘ghost communities with only old people left’”. In one Dry Corridor community the Special Rapporteur visited, drought has forced 80% of residents to leave Honduras, given how limited livelihood options are elsewhere in the country.
Mirroring increased interest in the media and even among the public at large, the link between climate change and forced migration received some high-profile attention during September’s Africa Climate Week and Africa Climate Summit, which ran concurrently in Nairobi in early September.
Perhaps the most notable development of the week was the signing of the Kampala Ministerial Declaration on Migration, Environment and Climate Change (KDMECC-AFRICA). 48 African nations have now agreed to adopt the declaration, which was first put forth in July 2022 and at the time signed by 15 states. The expanded consensus around the declaration represents a major milestone in addressing displacement as a result of climate change in the most climate-vulnerable continent in the world. Parties to the declaration commit to using a “human rights-based approach in the design and implementation of policies relating to the climate change-migration nexus.”
The individuals facing the worst consequences have played no part in creating this climate crisis. Adequate protection must be provided to individuals made vulnerable and exposed to climate hazards such as extreme temperatures, including by introducing mobility pathways for affected communities and providing funding to countries for the losses and damages caused by climate change in order to develop adequate infrastructure and help build livelihoods for refugees, displaced persons and migrants worldwide.
On the heels of the Africa Climate Week in early September and happening just over two months before the beginning of COP28 in Dubai, on Wednesday UN Secretary-General António Guterres hosted the first-ever Climate Ambition Summit during the UN General Assembly high-level week in New York. As the name suggests, the goal of the summit was to identify and encourage serious and urgent action on climate change.
This is just the latest call for climate action from the Secretary-General. With this summer’s record-breaking temperatures, Guterres remarked that the “era of global boiling” and “climate breakdown” is upon us. These emotive words mirror what civil society organizations and even many governments have been saying for quite some time now: not only must we act now, but we must act at the proper scale, something that is still missing from many talks and proposals.
And while discussions at the international level continue, communities around the world continue to experience loss and damage from climate change. For these communities, high-level talks are a distant echo of what they are seeing each and every day: reduced livelihood options, threats to physical and mental well-being, entrenched poverty and development losses, human rights violations, and forced displacement.
This year’s devastating wildfire season in Canada is a sobering reminder that while some areas are undoubtedly more vulnerable to climate change and its exacerbation of severe climate events, no place is truly safe. Indeed, the planet just endured its hottest three-month period on record, prompting UN Secretary-General António Guterres to declare that “climate breakdown has begun.” Only a coordinated, global response based in solidarity, responsibility, and protection of people will suffice.
Ultimately, the UN Special Rapporteur’s latest report is an urgent reminder that the time to take action on climate displacement is now. While aiming to develop a broader legal framework to protect the rights of those displaced across borders by climate change—such as enhancing existing refugee protections in the 1951 Refugee Convention, Latin American and African regional instruments like the Cartagena Declaration and OAU Convention, as well as exploring a new protocol to address cross border climate change-induced displacement — states must take immediate action to expand the provision of humanitarian visas and provide new, additional, and sustained financial support to ensure that human security is front and center in climate change response.
When it comes to displacement, there is a tendency to focus on one type at a time, usually internal or cross-border displacement. While this can be helpful in developing digestible advocacy messages and manageable policy responses, a siloed approach runs the risk of perpetuating gaps in data and understanding, especially when it comes to displacement as a result of climate change.
Should it be successful, the law would be the first of its kind in Latin America and the Caribbean, a region where the World Bank’s estimates there could be as many as 17 million internal climate migrants by 2050, representing 2.6 percent of the region’s total population.
While the new law only addresses internal climate displacement, it could have significant regional implications as countries continue to step up efforts to address both internal and cross-border movement due to the effects of climate change.
Earlier in the year, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) outlined that globally, flood-related disasters have increased by 134% since 2000, and floods are now lasting 29% longer. In fact, it is projected that climate change will push 130 million people into poverty over the next decade, creating multiple development setbacks, while also forcing 200 million internal migrants by 2050.
The resolution, which was adopted by consensus, seeks the opinion of the ICJ on the obligations of states, under international law, to protect other states who are unjustly impacted by the climate crisis as well as the rights of present and future generations against the adverse effects of climate change.
Last week, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published its Sixth Synthesis Report, summarizing the state of knowledge on climate change science with a clear message: “if we act now, we can still secure a liveable sustainable future for all.” The report also makes clear that yes, the climate is changing and with it, patterns of migration as well.
Whether in the United States or Bangladesh, we are at a critical juncture regarding climate change and displacement, and it is important to effectively communicate the issues at stake. Unfortunately, the “mass exodus” remark and the explicit linkage to “security” by multiple speakers during the Security Council session, despite coming from international leaders who are understandably frustrated with global inaction, risks sparking fear amongst the public and even policymakers.
Climate change is increasingly driving migration throughout the world. Yet, as climate change weakens economic growth in countries in the Global South, many are finding themselves too poor to migrate, stripping many of a key climate adaptation tool. This was one of the main findings of a recent study by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK).
The UN Human Rights Committee has found that Australia violated the rights of Torres Strait Islanders by failing to adequately protect them from the impacts of climate change, in a major decision with implications for climate justice and the protection of Indigenous Peoples’ rights in the face of climate change, as reported by Kristen Lyons in the Law Society of New South Wales Journal. The Committee concluded that Australia’s insufficient climate action constituted a violation of the Islanders rights to enjoy their culture and “be free from arbitrary interferences with their private life, family, and home,” as the UN High Commissioner for Rights press release states.
The aid flowing to Pakistan from the US, UK and other developed countries is not only insufficient, it’s inadequate in the face of the Global North's historic and continued carbon emissions. Aid alone will not be sufficient to respond to the growing climate crises in Pakistan and Global South countries. The era of loss and damage from the climate crisis is here, and it’s time for the Global North to pay up for its part in creating and perpetuating the climate crisis.
Not only are rural households predominately reliant on agriculture and thus highly vulnerable to climate change, but due to a lack of support financially both nationally and internationally, they are forced to spend their own limited resources on preparing and responding to climate disasters. In the face of all this, the recently concluded preparatory climate talks for COP27 in Egypt in November, saw wealthy high emitting nations side-step previous promises and obligations to address the loss and damage the climate crisis is inflicting on the Global South. Once again, promises made, but not kept, and one need only look to the present floods in Bangladesh and so many more disasters to see the inherent injustice in this.
Human migration due to droughts in particular will increase by at least 200% throughout the rest of the 21st century, according to a recent study published in International Migration Review. The Stony Brook University team worked from 16 climate models and social science data to generate their predictions, focusing on two scenarios. In an ‘optimistic’ scenario, in which countries live up to their Paris Agreement commitments, the percentage increase in drought-induced migration stands at 200%. In a pessimistic scenario, based on current energy use and emissions, that number has the potential to reach a staggering 500% increase.
Reflecting the need for fairness and solidarity in any framework meant to tackle the complex issues around climate migration, the researchers argue that those seeking asylum should be absorbed in host countries according to cumulative greenhouse gas emissions. This principle of proportionality is central to ongoing discussions about climate change, particularly loss and damage. Indeed, while it continues to ruffle feathers in wealthy countries, it is undeniable that the people and countries least responsible for climate change are bearing the brunt of its negative effects.
Agroforestry involves a wide range of trees that are protected, regenerated, planted or managed in agricultural landscapes so that they interact synergistically with annual crops, livestock, and wildlife. Not only is agroforestry positioned to enhance general crop yields through regenerative farming techniques, but fruit and other trees planted can themselves be used to generate food and other commercially marketable products, such as timber, fodder for livestock, fuel, and medicinal herbs. By improving both food and economic security–arguably the biggest consequences of climate disruption and the greatest drivers of climate migration globally–agroforestry embodies adaptation in the most holistic sense of the term. Not to mention, of course, the mitigation objectives that can be achieved simultaneously. In fact, when done on a sufficiently large scale, carbon credits can be tapped to provide a direct source of finance to those communities leading the change.
A new UK foreign office-funded study has found extreme climate events like cyclones, storms, floods and drought are driving residents in Odisha’s coastal Kendrapara district and Jharkhand’s Palamu districts to migrate. Alarmingly, the social protections available are increasingly stretched beyond capacity to accommodate the increasing climate events, driving residents to migrate and in turn, increasing their vulnerabilities to trafficking.
At the same time, an extreme heat wave has been impacting thousands across India and Pakistan, which the World Weather Attribution says is 30 times more likely because of the effects of climate change, and in fact, “would have been extraordinarily rare without human-induced climate change.”
On April 27, 2022, the Climate Vulnerable Forum (CVF), an international partnership of global South countries highly vulnerable to a warming planet, released a telling report titled “Climate Survival Leadership Barometer”. The report was released under the CVF’s signature initiative “Midnight Survival Deadline for the Climate”, which served to remind governments of the obligations they had taken on at the UN Climate Change Conference at Paris, or COP21, in 2015. The report analyzes updates to national mitigation and adaptation targets – referred to as “Nationally Determined Contributions” (NDCs) that countries committed to revise every five years starting in 2020 to deliver on the Paris Agreement. Some notable findings on the adaptation side are worth highlighting, for they speak to the collective will (or lack thereof) of governments to institutionalize the very resiliency-building measures needed to address root causes of migration in a climate crisis-stricken world.
Eighty-five percent of the world's refugees are hosted by the world’s poorest countries. More often than not when they escape from a dire situation, they find refuge in a place with fewer resources than where they fled. Because of this, it largely falls on the refugees themselves to sustainably develop their communities. In many places, despite the hardships, they are doing just that.
As climate disasters increase, so too does the cost associated with them. A new UN report on disaster risk reduction shows that disaster events across the world have steadily increased over the past few decades and they are only predicted to grow in regularity, to the point where we will soon be facing 1.5 disasters each day across the world.
The average number of disaster events per year between 1980 and 1999 was 200, and in 2015 there were 400. By 2030, the number of disasters may balloon to upwards of 560 per year and the average trends suggest a 30% increase from 2000 to 2030.
Due to a lack of economic opportunity and common natural disasters, Odisha has long been a source of migrant workers both in India and abroad. For decades, economic stagnation in the region paired with growth and urbanization around other parts of India meant that Odisha was already a hotbed for migrants before climate change became a more prominent push factor. Today, it is one of the most affected regions in India by climate change which is only pushing more and more people to migrate both temporarily and permanently.
Throughout the 2010s, the lakes in the region, which is Kenya’s portion of the Great Rift Valley, rose slowly, displacing tens of thousands of people. But in 2020 a particularly severe rainy season caused the flooding to accelerate. Lake Turkana, in the arid northern part of the country, actually swallowed a nearby lake altogether. Freshwater Lake Baringo, further south, flooded eight miles inland and moved dangerously close to a saltwater lake, which would have devastated wildlife in both, with an inevitable impact on the area’s tourism industry, largely centered around the saltwater lake’s famous flamingos. By some estimates, Baringo has risen at least 9 meters since 2013.
It’s been one month since Russia invaded Ukraine, causing 3.5 million people to flee the country, an overwhelming majority heading west into the European Union (EU). As the smoke has cleared from the initial onset of the invasion, a picture has begun to emerge highlighting the either “unusually generous or overtly racist” stance taken by western media and the EU towards Ukrainian refugees in contrast to other non-Ukrainian refugees.
When those displaced by climate induced famine or conflict come from Africa, the Middle East or South Asia seeking refuge, can they expect such a warm reception from the EU and other wealthy nations as Ukrainian nationals have received? Sadly, refugee policy in Europe and other wealthy western nations have made it clear this is not the new status quo in handling refugees.
Lumensoft Technologies/UNSPLASH
An impending second infestation in as many years that could destroy sugarcane, cotton, rice, fruit and vegetable crops is a deeper concern for farmers than the current novel coronavirus pandemic. The Sindh province chief minister warns of a “massive locust attack” expected from Iran in mid-May, worse than the previous year. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) is warning of dire food insecurity if the crops are eaten by locusts, prices of staples like flour and vegetables skyrocketing and losses as high as $2.8 billion for summer crops and $2.2 billion for winter crops. Last year, Pakistan suffered its worst attack of locusts since 1993 in all four of its provinces, for which it was unprepared, and a repeat this year in the midst of COVID-19 could be catastrophic for Pakistan’s poorest communities. Unprecedented rains in Sindh’s desert led to vegetation cover that enabled locust breeding and crop attacks. FAO and climate scientists say warming oceans have led to increased cyclones in the Indian Ocean, causing heavy rainfall in the Arabian Peninsula and Horn of Africa, creating the perfect environment for locust breeding and the resulting swarms seen in East Africa, the Middle East and South Asia. Insects are laying eggs in nearly 40% of Pakistan and previously unaffected regions are now also impacted. Experts predict swarms, much larger than the ones in 2019, breeding in Pakistan’s deserts are likely to be joined by others in Iran, with more arriving from the Horn of Africa around July. The swarms are expected to be much larger than those in 2019 and travel in swarms of 30 to 50 million insects that cover 93 miles and devour 200 tons of crops per day. (Reuters)
Analysis
Per UNHCR estimates, Pakistan hosts 1.4 million Afghan refugees within its borders. As of today, Pakistan has 35,788 COVID-19 cases, the majority split between the Punjab and Sindh provinces, where 770 people have died. Neighboring Iran has 115,000 COVID-19 cases and hosts approximately 3 million Afghans. Together, Pakistan and Iran, host 90% of the world’s 2.7 million Afghan refugees. Afghanistan has 5,639 COVID-19 cases, and Afghan refugees in Iran and Pakistan, despite persistent violence in the country, including a horrific terror attack this week, continue to return home due to the coronavirus pandemic in Iran and Pakistan. Meanwhile, it’s the holy month of Ramadan, ending in late May, where an uptick in food buying and consumption is likely, all of which can have an impact on market supply and demand, further contributing to concerns of regional food insecurity. With pandemic response, economic losses and additional humanitarian needs converging with spikes in food insecurity, violence and refugee returns, the pressures are immense for not only some of the world’s most vulnerable populations but also those living on the margins of survival.
