Facing the Double Burden of Climate Change and Conflict

Patrick Schneider via UNSPLASH

In its new report, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) finds people living in conflict zones are adversely affected by climate change. Of the 20 countries most vulnerable to climate change, 12 are currently at war. 

Conflict-affected communities who already face extreme stress now face further hardships by climate shocks, and state institutions, essential social services, social cohesion and even freedom of movement, which can help offset impacts to livelihood, are now profoundly disturbed by conflict.

In turn, conflict often has impacts on the natural environment as well via direct attacks or damage through warfare, which contaminate water, soil, land and air. 

The International Federation of Red Cross Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) warns that by 2050, 200 million people could be humanitarian aid dependent every year, which is double the current number. It’s clear the international community fails to meet that need now, strained further by the global pandemic and rising poverty, and no stretch of the imagination is needed to envision what the growing impacts of climate change could yield. 

They rightly highlight the significant climate finance gap between stable and fragile countries, where at present, the bulk of capital is used to support efforts to reduce carbon emissions, which is essential, but simultaneous action is needed to help communities adapt to climate change.

From Mali to Iraq, civilians in conflict zones are doubly impacted by climate extremes. Despite being the most impacted and having the least contribution to global warming, communities hardest hit are the most neglected by global climate action. ICRC urges humanitarian actors and beyond in the international community to make significant systemic and structural changes, increase political will, good governance, investment, technical knowledge and calls for a shift in mindsets to offset climate risks and protect people from a situation far worse to come. (Reuters)

For more on the nexus between climate change, conflict and displacement, read our field report from the Lake Chad Basin.

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‘Kolkata Will Drown’ - an Animated Film Brings Climate Change Home

Mamun Srizon via UNSPLASH

The animated short “Wade”, by homegrown filmmakers Upamanyu Bhattacharyya and Kalp Sanghvi has already won numerous awards but that’s not only why it seems we should take note. The animators made the film upon returning to India to learn of the problem of rising seas and subsequent displacement of people in the Sundarban island chain. With Kolkata being so close to the Sundarbans, learning of worsening climate, displacement and even a 2019 study that warns the mangrove home of the Royal Bengal tiger could vanish, they set about to tell a story. 

'Wade' is a climate change nightmare set in a Kolkata ravaged by sea level rise, where a group of humans and an ambush of tigers face off on the flooded stre...

Their research took them deep into understanding the political and social impacts of climate change, all of which is woven into the narrative. Critics of doomsday studies may find faults with the film, which we have yet to see, but what we applaud is their motive to tell not only an uncommon tale about climate change, but one that sets the record straight: those who contribute the least to climate change are the ones most impacted by its effects. (CondeNast Traveller)

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Climate Woes Growing for Women, Hit Worst By Displacement and Migration

Ninno Jack Jr/UNSPLASH

Unsurprisingly to those closely following the links between climate change and displacement, women and girls are at greater risk to extreme weather, displacement and once displaced, are at greater risk to the perils of displacement like illness, increased farm work and sexual violence in camps. CARE International’s new report documents scientists and expert warnings that climate change exacerbates underlying gender inequalities, something we have also written about previously. 

CARE reports that displacement linked to climate change was already a “harsh reality for millions of people today” but if global warming trends continue, millions more could be forcibly displaced. 

Of those displaced, many are unable to return due to continued climate shocks, while those women and girls already climate displaced, continue to face harsher impacts. Women and girls displaced by Cyclone Idai, which impacted Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Malawi in 2019, continue to face serious health threats due to lack of access to healthcare. The women among the 200,000 displaced last year in Ethiopia by drought and floods face higher levels of sexual violence in shelters and are vulnerable to attacks on longer and more frequent trips to fetch firewood and water. 

In displacement - climate-linked or otherwise - women and girls’ vulnerability to sexual violence is heightened, as noted in our Perspectives Feature: The Gendered Impacts of Climate Displacement, where one of our earliest cases was a young woman in a female-headed household who revealed she was raped and became pregnant, while fetching water outside the displacement camp. 

CARE echoed the same point we raised of how climate change indirectly impacts women and girls with the additional burden of having to earn money and tend to their families when men are forced to seek income elsewhere. This is particularly acute in remote, rural areas where women are the primary persons to fetch water, firewood and tend to subsistence farming.

We noted that following Cyclone Aila in the Indian Sundarbans, when the men left in search of income after the cyclone destroyed livelihoods, some women were forced into brothels, where a 20-25% uptick in migratory sex workers was noted, following the cyclone. 

As has been pointed out repeatedly, government and aid agencies need to fund and gather more data on how women and girls are affected by climate-linked displacement and migration so as to better inform policy and programming, but even more importantly, women need to be at the forefront of the decision-making that responds to climate threats, especially where it impacts their own communities. (Reuters)

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Head to PERSPECTIVES, featuring stories from the field to learn more about how women and girls are impacted by climate-linked displacement.

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The UN Is Sounding the Alarm on 'Climate Refugees' - We Weigh In

Markus Spiske/UNSPLASH

When UNHCR released its Global Trends report last week, not only did it contain alarming statistics like nearly 80 million people forcibly displaced in 2019, amounting to 1% of the world’s population or one out of every 97 people in the population, but it also contained climate change as one of the causes of that forced displacement. This was unprecedented for the UN Refugee Agency, which notes the risks that both extreme weather and long-term environmental changes pose to displacement with the “interplay between climate, conflict, hunger, poverty, and persecution creates increasingly complex emergencies.” UNHCR says it is particularly concerned about the “risk of climate-related displacement of people”... because “the reality is that climate change is forcing people around the world to leave their homes and even their countries. We’ve been working on displacement issues linked to climate change and disasters for many years, and we have long seen firsthand the devastating impact on people uprooted from their homes.” (Gizmodo Earther)

Analysis

It’s hugely significant that UNHCR made these connections between climate change and displacement and, even more, it is really welcome. Especially since a few of us have been making these connections for a while now. Much of the discourse around building policy on cross-border climate displacement has stalled under the premise that climate displacement will be largely internal. Even if that were true, we’ve always found that rather problematic since it tends to presume countries will be equipped to deal with the level of expected displacement and  overlooks the very real protection needs that even internal climate displaced people have. Furthermore, our experience has told us, people usually leave their homes as a last resort, and after repeated struggles. It’s also not unheard of to be repeatedly displaced either - sometimes internal displacement, then cross-border, if needs go unmet. 

Central American asylum-seekers at the US border are prime examples of nexus dynamics - that is those fleeing situations of violence or persecution, recognized under refugee law, that are interconnected to situations linked to climate change, where Dry Corridor residents in these countries have been affected by a near 6-year drought that has made over 2.5 million people severely food insecure. 

This recognition by UNHCR can go a long way in both urging and helping countries recognize that climate change is contributing to conditions that more and more people are fleeing each year, and for the thousands of people already dealing with this reality, this shift is very welcome indeed. 

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COVID-19 Adds to Adversity of Climate Refugees

Tam Wai/UNSPLASH

Already outside a legal framework, now facing closed borders, restrictions in rights and mobility, two experts - Sumudu Attaputu, Executive Director of the Madison Human Rights Program at the University of Wisconsin and Abdullah Resul Demir, head of the Istanbul-based International Refugee Rights Association - weigh in. Attaputu says the recent UN Human Rights Committee’s decision in Ionae Teitota v. New Zealand in January 2020 was a positive step forward in legal solutions for cross-border climate displacement but people will move whether there is a legal framework or not if they feel it is unsafe to stay in their homelands. 

Demir highlighted refugee realities that are only heightened by the Coronavirus pandemic. For instance, many recognized refugees and those who lack legal status are equally likely to have minimal right and access to education, technology, communications, economic participation, healthcare access and more. Similarly, migrants and refugees work with no insurance, so unlike impacted businesses and economies, refugees don’t even have the  insurance indemnities to buttress losses. He added that environmental migration is a result of " unequal income distribution and (a ) system of exploitation,” and so long as these economic irregularities continue unchecked, people will be forced to migrate. (AA)

Analysis

As we shared in our World Refugee Day Feature, surveillance, curfews and lack of status, rights and more are just some of the impediments impacting refugee access to COVID-19 medical treatment, and it’s in these conditions, that refugees are stepping up in their own communities to respond to the needs of fellow refugees and migrants.

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Hottest May on Record With Environmental Disasters Impacting 18 Countries

William Bossen/UNSPLASH

Greenhouse gas emissions continue to increase global temperatures, putting 2020 on track to rank among the hottest 10 years ever, perhaps even in the top five. Scientists are even more alarmed that average temperatures over the last 12 months show one of the hottest years ever recorded in their data set. The most-above average temperatures were recorded in Siberia, Alaska and Antarctica. 

Meanwhile, at least 11 distinct environmental events or disasters occurred last month in May in 18 countries during the Coronavirus pandemic. Disasters include heavy rains in Uzbekistan that caused a dam to collapse, impacting 70,000 people, floods across East Africa, killing several and displacing tens of thousands, Cyclone Amphan in the Bay of Bengal, which displaced three million people and heavy rains in Ecuador and Colombia, to name just a few. (Reuters & AA News)

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