Despite the Pandemic, Frontline Nations Push Ahead on Stronger Climate Plans

Mike Baumeister/UNSPLASH

Jamaica is one of many nations ready to take action with stronger climate plans, just as the Atlantic hurricane season kicks off. A few countries have met the Paris Agreement to upgrade their climate action plans - Suriname, the Marshall Islands, Rwanda, Norway and soon, hopefully, Jamaica. The UN urged states to not let economic fallout from the COVID-19 crisis derail their commitments, noting the urgency with 2019 as the second hottest year on record and losses from climate-related disasters costing $150 billion. The world’s biggest polluters have yet to announce climate action plans that include emissions-cutting targets, many now distracted by post-lockdown economic recession. The director of Nairobi-based Power Shift Africa said the COVID-19 crisis exemplified the political will of rich states to mobilize and raise funds, still lacking in the promised climate finance of the Paris Agreement. He said African countries are working on stronger climate action plans because the impacts of climate change are already impacting the continent. (Reuters)

Analysis

Frontline nations have an urgency to keep climate change as a policy priority precisely because they are the nations dealing with the worst of the impacts of climate change right now. COVID-19’s economic impacts have many developed nations and its citizens remarking on the urgency of re-generating stalled economies. In essence: absent so many lost paychecks, climate change can wait. 

But for much of the developing world, paychecks have long been absent with climate change a factor at the same time, wreaking havoc on the economy, development and, in some cases, threatening stability, well before the Coronavirus. This is not just the case for sea-level states. Slow-onset climate change has been a factor in many developing countries dependent on agriculture for survival and livelihood, while some middle-income agrarian exporting countries have been forced to discontinue production, importing food crops once produced at home. 

---

Water, Energy, Food Security Key to MENA Stability

Dave Herring/UNSPLASH

Water, Energy and Food Security Key to MENA Stability

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)

---

Recent SPOTLIGHTS - Stories You May Have Missed

---

Florida Youth "Climate Refugees" Sue for Right to Stable Climate

Marcos Rivas/UNSPLASH

Florida Youth Sue for Right to a Stable Climate

The eight Florida youth, who two years ago filed suit, get a hearing today in a Leon County Courtroom. The youth are challenging Florida’s continuing use of fossil fuels despite knowing of its contributions to climate change, thus violating the constitutional rights of Florida’s youth. The plaintiffs’ lawyer says if Florida were a country, it would be the 27th largest emitter of carbon dioxide in the world, having emitted 235.1 million metric tons in 2016 alone. Florida ranks third in the US in both energy and electricity consumption. Although the state has almost year-round sunshine, only 3 percent of its energy is produced via renewables, lagging far behind the US national average of 15 percent.  

One of the plaintiffs, 16-year old Lushia Phillips, identifies as a ‘climate refugee’, having been displaced by 2017’s hurricane Irma. Raised by just her single mother with no financial resources, Phillips says they had no option but to leave Florida once the storm destroyed their lives. She says the state of Florida should be held accountable as a safeguard against future ‘climate refugees.’ She says she knows first-hand how difficult it is to be driven from your home and wants to protect others from a similar fate. (WMNF)

Analysis

Clearly, Florida’s climate displaced are not refugees under the existing definition, which requires a person to have fled their countries for reasons of persecution on the basis of race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular social group. The principle behind international refugee law is protection. Protection from the harm of conflict and persecution innocent civilians have no role in creating nor sustaining. In the same vein, climate displaced populations face the same need for protection when the impacts of climate change threaten their lives and livelihoods. So while we debate terminology, certainly contextually important and appropriate, it should not be at the detriment of overlooking the important points of protection for so many climate displaced, whether displaced within or across borders by climate change.

---

Cyclone Amphan Puts Focus Back on Millions Displaced by Climate Disaster

Piyush Priyank/UNSPLASH

Cyclone Amphan Puts Focus Back on Millions Displaced by Climate Disaster

May 20 saw the most powerful storm in the Bay of Bengal in over a decade make landfall in populated areas of southern Bengal. At least 86 people are dead, thousands of homes are destroyed and relief operations are hampered by COVID-19 lockdowns. Numerous climate activists in India and Bangladesh say the most recent disaster makes clear that current evacuation procedures are inadequate to deal with the magnitude of need. They say disaster evacuation infrastructure falls short in ensuring social distancing and meeting medical and quarantine needs. 

South Asia is a global hotspot for disaster displacement with 9.5 million new disaster displacements in 2019, the highest figure since 2012, according to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre. India, alone, recorded the highest number of disaster displacements in the world with five million new disasters in 2019. 

While both India and Bangladesh have developed early warning systems and evacuation plans, according to Saleem Huq of the Dhaka-based International Centre for Climate Change and Development, the intensity of the cyclones are increasing due to climate change and thus both countries need to enhance their future preparedness. 

Furthermore, while evacuations save lives, it’s the aftermath that goes unmet as disasters destroy property, livelihoods, and with it the futures of generations to come. Thus, climate activists say adaptive measures are required to retrofit infrastructure to withstand disasters and provide livelihood options and tools for climate-resilient agriculture that safeguard food security in disasters and also in response to the impacts of slow-onset climate change. 

Droughts, sea-level rise and changes in weather conditions are impacting crops and thus food security, forcing many to migrate for survival according to a new policy brief Climate Migrants Pushed to the Brink by ActionAid International. 

ActionAid says climate displacements in South Asia are increasing but a comprehensive policy framework is still lacking because of inadequate data, the scale of the problem continues to go unrecognized and a total absence of local-level strategies on disaster displacement. (The Wire) 

Analysis

ActionAid International warns that due to inadequate shelter for all those evacuated and with a need to maintain social distancing to avoid coronavirus spread, shelters will be packed and lack sanitation facilities, especially impacting women. As we pointed out in our feature The Gendered Impacts of Climate Displacement, women are often more adversely affected by climate disasters in numerous ways from displacement, gender-based violence and even death. Unfortunately it didn’t require the double whammy of a global pandemic and one of the largest cyclones ever to coincide in order to recognize that evacuation and emergency shelters - both in conflict and disaster settings - are often inadequate to meet the needs of impacted communities, most notably vulnerable and special needs populations such as the elderly, disabled, LGBT, women and girls. 

---

Rising Seas Point Miami's Rich Inland, Potentially Displacing its Immigrant and Refugee Communities

Jason Briscoe/UNSPLASH

Climate Gentrification: How Extreme Weather is Displacing Low-Income Residents From Their Communities

Some in Miami have serious cause for concern about their real estate. Miami is the fourth-largest population vulnerable to sea-level rise in the word, and with levels rising faster than ever, people are looking inland in search of higher ground. Situated within the 2.7 million residents of Miami Dade County - ‘ground zero’ for climate change - Miami has the largest amount of exposed assets and the county is within the second most populous state in the US exposed to the dangers of climate change. Miami’s Mayor acknowledges the gentrification pressures these movements create, already underway with developers eyeing low-income immigrant and refugee communities like Little Havana, Little Haiti and Liberty City. 

But not only Miami, extreme weather events have forced those with means to consider relocation. Flagstaff, Arizona’s Mayor noted a 25% increase in second-home purchases among people he coined “climate refugees” fleeing heat, while raising costs on low-income communities in the process. (Yahoo Finance)

Analysis

Last year the Miami City Commission green-lighted a billion dollar urban investment project called Magic City in Miami’s Little Haiti neighborhood meant to draw tourism, businesses and spur creative innovation. Community and social justice activists saw another side, concerned the development would raise rents, property values and costs of living for the already struggling poor and working class residents. 

A 2018 Harvard University Study popularized the term ‘climate gentrification’ - referring to Miami real estate transactions of increased property values in higher elevation neighborhoods. Their theory largely is that climate change impacts make some property more desirable than others and some populations, with the luxury of choice in movement to higher ground, will contribute to raised costs that could lead to displacement of existing populations. 

It’s interesting to note they actually use the term ‘displacement’, a term more commonly used in the contexts of conflicts and natural disasters. 

Just as it is with conflict scenarios, it’s difficult to say with any certainty whether climate change is driving development and relocation in Miami. But in both scenarios, experts can attest that climate change can certainly be a factor contributing to displacement. Meena Jaganathath, co-founder of the Community Justice Project that represented some Little Haiti residents and someone Climate Refugees spoke to as well, says climate change is “increasingly becoming a major factor.”

It could be that Miami proves to be a test case for the dangers the UN warns climate change could pose to poverty, displacement and hunger. In a report last year on climate change and poverty, Philip Alston, the UN’s former special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, warned of the potential for a ‘climate apartheid’ scenario, where the rich would escape the ravages of climate change - overheating, hunger and conflict - simply because they could afford to, while the poor would be left to suffer. 

Little Haiti, known for the haven it is for Haitian immigrants and refugees fleeing political turmoil who arrived more than 40 years ago, now potentially face further displacement in their newly established homes in exile. Perhaps that’s the harshest cruelty of all.

---

Convergence in Chile on Climate Change, Conflicts and Migration Outside Meaningful Framework

Benjamin Gremler/UNSPLASH

The International Protection of Climate Migrants: Is Chile Up to the Challenge?

Monte Patria’s population in Chile’s Limarí Province, with its primarily agricultural economy, is feeling the impacts of climate change. The area’s semi-arid conditions are further intensified by rainfall variations, extreme temperatures and glacial melt. Government water policies are further straining shortages from droughts and other restrictive policies such as privatization.  Facing mounting hardships, residents have been driven to migrate to other parts of the country. Chile’s decisions to bow out of the UN Global Compact for Migration and the regional 2018 Escazú Agreement, on the basis of national sovereignty, have left it weakened to respond to the growing needs of migrants. This author thinks it’s in contravention to Chile’s own interests since its economy is largely dependent on natural resources utilized in agriculture, forestry and mining and apparently meets 7 of the 9 conditions of climate change vulnerability established by the UN. Furthermore, according to Chile’s National Institute of Human Rights, there are currently 117 socio-environmental conflicts - 82% in indigenous territories. Chile lacks a domestic policy framework as well as institutions to deal with the ramifications of climate impacts, including population displacement, migration and disaster response. (OpenGlobalRights) 

Analysis

According to Greenpeace, no one in Chile is unaffected by climate change. The Laguna de Acule, a lake impacted by a seven-year drought in the central and southern areas of the country, is a dependent water source for farmers and a lakeside retreat for many of Santiago’s wealthy residents. With the onset of the drought, the lake began to recede, and took with business and economic gains and real estate profits. A local expert attributes most of the blame to climate change, even if aquifers were disturbed by the country’s 2010 earthquake. With glacial melts, temperature increases of more than 2 degrees Celsius in some parts and resource conflicts on the rise, many see climate change as the country’s greatest external threat. Even if climate change attribution is not certain, its contribution seems likely. Meanwhile, Chile hosts about 10% of the global 4.5 million Venezuelan refugees and asylum-seekers. 

---