Charikar Flood Survivors Mourn Dead as Afghanistan Grows Increasingly Vulnerable to Climate Change

Photo by EJ Wolfson via UNSPLASH

After the August 26 flood, 129 people have already been found dead under the rubble and mud and the town is destroyed. Flooding and natural disasters are not new to Afghanistan or Pakistan, but experts warn they could increase with climate change altering weather patterns. Worse yet, both countries are ranked high as vulnerable to the impacts of climate change and among the countries least prepared to deal with the effects. 

The UNDP’s Chief of Livelihoods and Resilience warns “climate change, conflict, displacement, and urbanization are linked, climate change is a risk multiplier in the complex socio-economic and political context of Afghanistan.”

So far Pakistan’s monsoon rains this year have killed 233 people, and destroyed more than 1,300 homes. Karachi usually would receive five inches of rain from July to September, but this year it has seen more than 19 inches already. 

The Karachi head of Pakistan’s meteorological department says the effects of climate change are already being seen and felt. 

Land and housing pressures from above average birth rates are already being felt, and if political negotiations go well, Afghan refugee returnees from Iran and Pakistan will further increase those pressures. 

Thus far, Pakistan’s national climate change adaptation plans have been sidelined by a lack of money and capacity. (Telegraph)

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Latest Bangladeshi Floods Impact Millions - Yes, Let’s Talk about the Injustice

Ahmed Hasan via UNSPLASH

Government estimates and satellite data reveal as much as 24 to 37 percent of the country is submerged, a million homes impacted, 4.7 million people affected and 54 people have died, mostly children, in rains that are expected to continue through the middle of August.

The NY Times reports it’s too soon to know what role climate change plays but Bangladesh has already seen a pattern of more severe and frequent floods stemming from the Brahmaputra River, and scientists expect things to only get worse in the years ahead. 

It’s a tale of suffering we see too often in the media, but this time, it’s so heartening to note the welcome emphasis on responsibility and justice: 

“This is one of the most striking inequities of the modern era. Those who are least responsible for polluting Earth’s atmosphere are among those most hurt by its consequences. The average American is responsible for 33 times more planet-warming carbon dioxide than the average Bangladeshi.”

From Vanuatu sinking into the Pacific and drought in the Horn of Africa, inequity is the focus, when taking into account the world’s richest 10 percent are responsible for 40 percent of the global environmental damage, while the poorest 10 percent account for less than 5 percent. (NY Times) 

Inequity is exactly the point and framing this as a justice issue needs to be front and center in the conversation, just as we say in our PERSPECTIVES Feature below:

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America Needs Refugees - Our Thoughts on a NY Times Op-Ed

Zaatari Refugee Camp in Jordan by Amali Tower

Jessica Goudeau has a book about refugees releasing soon, a tale of two refugees in America within the larger context of modern refugee resettlement in the United States, which under the Trump administration, has been systematically targeted for destruction, that she details today in a New York Times Op-Ed. 

As a humanitarian and refugee rights activist that began her career in refugee resettlement, I have worked the entire exhaustive and vetted process that is the United States Refugee Admissions Program. That is to say, I have worked every main artery of a system that refers the less than 1 percent of global refugees considered for resettlement, based on protection needs, from the UN Refugee Agency to the US government, and all its intermediaries that work on its behalf in interviewing, vetting, preparing, counseling and so much more. 

Goudeau is right that refugees are the most thoroughly vetted of any group to enter the United States, and this after enduring unspeakable horrors of persecution and violence in their home countries and years of exile in host countries. There simply is no truth to continued claims that refugees, and immigrants, as a whole, present a security threat to the United States. 

The US, which used to resettle the largest number of refugees within its borders, has consistently lowered the annual refugee admissions ceiling since Donald Trump’s election.  

At a time when 1 percent of the global population is displaced  - nearly 80 million people- 1 million of whom are refugees eligible for resettlement, the Trump administration yet again slashed the refugee admissions ceiling in 2020 to only 18,000. 

A program that began in 1980 with the passage of the Refugee Act and a refugee admissions ceiling of 231,700, the ceiling has had highs and lows since that time, but never as low as its current level. 

In 2016, the year before Trump took office, the Obama administration raised the ceiling by 15,000 persons to 85,000 with plans to resettle Syrian refugees desperately in need of durable solutions. 

The very next year, after Trump took office, the ceiling was drastically lowered to 50,000 and it’s been a freefall downward spiral ever since. 

At a time when the US border receives a steady stream of Central American asylum-seekers fleeing violence, persecution, corruption, state repression and also the growing impacts of climate change, this assault on asylum policy and the refugee admissions program is truly detrimental to individual lives. In addition, it comes at a time when the conversation should be widening to include climate justice policies that take into account the realities of migrant farmers and rural asylum-seekers who are telling us a shifting global reality, important to our collective human security, if only we would listen.

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Bangladesh Opening ‘Climate Refugee’ Complex for 4,500 Families

Al Amin Khan via UNSPLASH

In what is being billed the world’s largest climate refugee housing scheme, 20 new housing blocks opened last Thursday and will house 650 families in the initial phase, with more under construction. 

Many of the new residents are from the Bay of Bengal island of Kutubdia, which is now 40% underwater. One of the first recipients was Jobadia Begum, who lost several family members during the country’s devastating 1991 cyclone that destroyed much of the island and killed 138,000 people. 

Many of those displaced in that cyclone have since been living in a slum housing 40,000 outside of Cox’s Bazar airport, which is also vulnerable to flooding during high tide. (AFP)

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At UN Security Council Debate, Climate Emergency ‘a Danger to Peace’

Daryan Shamkhali via UNSPLASH

At Friday’s open debate on climate and security, the UN Assistant Secretary-General for Europe, Central Asia and the Americas, Miroslav Jenča said the climate emergency is exacerbating existing risk to international peace and security while creating new ones, calling on security actors to play a role in implementing the Paris Agreement. While impacts of climate change varied across regions, he said fragile and conflict-affected countries were most exposed and least able to cope with the effects, noting that seven of the 10 most vulnerable and least equipped, were supported by a UN peacekeeping operation or special political mission within its borders. He said failure to act on the growing impacts of climate change would undermine existing conflict prevention, peacemaking and peacebuilding work, while also trapping vulnerable countries in a vicious cycle of climate disaster and conflict. 

Meanwhile, the United Arab Emirates, (presumably speaking on behalf of regional groups, likely the Middle East or regional bloc) suggested a new approach, calling on the Security Council to work in partnership with development and humanitarian actors to curtail the likelihood of conflict in climate-vulnerable countries. 

The UAE said the link between climate change and security is now well-recognized in ample evidence around the world of how droughts, extreme weather, desertification and others impacts, including in the Middle East, lead to social unrest, competition over natural resources and displacement, all of which contribute significantly to conflict and violence. 

They went even further to suggest the Security Council operationalize the climate-security nexus within its scope of work with targeted trainings for UN staff in conflict settings where climate change impacts are prevalent. 

Vietnam, a member of the Security Council through 2021 with climate change as a policy priority, reminded members that sea level rise and saltwater intrusion in the Mekong Delta are threats to Vietnam’s sustainable development. 

Vietnam urged the Security Council to address the root causes of conflicts such as poverty, injustice, militarism and disregard for international law, calling for security analysis to now also include considerations of climate change impacts. (UN News, Emirates News Agency, Nhan Dan)

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Pacific Climate Expert Briefed UN Security Council

David Hoefler via UNSPLASH

This morning, Niue’s Coral Pasisi, a Pacific representative of the Climate Security Expert Network briefed the UN Security Council on climate issues facing the Pacific, after what she said was a decade of lobbying efforts. Her presentation is part of a ministerial-level open debate with a focus to better understand how climate security issues affect different regions. 

Along with Pasisi, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres addressed the Security Council, along with a senior official from the UN Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs (DPPA) and Colonel Mahamadou Magai of Niger who was expected to focus on the impacts of climate change on food security and conflict in the Sahel, according to the publication What’s In Blue, from the think tank Security Council Report, a publication and NGO we once worked with. 

 Pasisi says there are “a great many ways we can connect the impacts of climate change to undermining peace and security, the stability of communities, economies and countries in the region.”

Her goal was to focus the Security Council on climate fragility impacts that warrants a security response of intervention before issues turn into conflict, citing maritime boundaries in the Pacific, impacts around the Blue Economy, global competition for fisheries and related food insecurity in fisheries trade, and displacement of the region’s populations. 

Pasisi says people are already being displaced internally and across borders as a result of climate change, with forced displacements occurring within often highly contested land, presenting an additional challenge, especially since there are no existing legal or policy arrangements to protect resources or maritime jurisdictions. (RNZ)

What’s In Blue reported that Germany, president of the Security Council this month, co-sponsored the meeting with nine other Council members. In addition to Council members, several UN member states addressed the Council, representing groups such as the: Alliance of Small Island States, the Nordic Group, Pacific Small Island Developing States, Group of Friends on Climate and Security and Pacific Island Forum. A representative from the EU and Kenya and Ireland, future Council members in 2021-2022 also addressed the Council. 

What’s In Blue shared the following questions that were to be examined in a concept note shared amongst Council members ahead of the debate:  

• How can the Council obtain authoritative information on the impact of climate-related security risks in conflict environments?

• What tools, partnerships and early warning capabilities would support the timely assessment of and response to climate-related security risks to prevent the escalation of conflicts?

• How can UN in-country resources (including peace operations and special political missions) be enabled to better collect, analyze and report on relevant information in countries and regions in a gender-sensitive manner?

• Which current tools can the Council use to address the security implications of climate change and how could these be enhanced to respond appropriately to climate-related security risks?

• How can the Council enhance its operational readiness to address such risks?

Climate security remains a controversial topic for the UN Security Council to engage, with China, Russia and the US raising a range of issues that climate change is fundamentally a sustainable development issue, opposing expansion of climate-security language and insistence that other UN agencies are better suited to address the topic. 

However, most members seem to support integration of climate-related security risks to examine factors such as drought, food security, water scarcity, desertification as examples that can exacerbate conflict and further support the development of “synergies among the Council and other UN entities in addressing climate-security challenges.”

What’s in Blue reports these countries desire the Council pursue a resolution on climate-security issues, and Germany had drafted a resolution in collaboration with nine other members on June 20, but the negotiations were suspended in early July, as the “political environment in the Council prevented them from pursuing a resolution at the current time.”

Today’s meeting was the Security Council’s fifth thematic debate on climate-security issues. The Council has addressed security impacts related to climate change in 12 resolutions since 2015. (What’s In Blue)

One of these resolutions was focused on climate change impacts in the Lake Chad Basin, which we addressed in our Field Report, “Shrinking Options: The Nexus Between Climate Change, Displacement and Security in the Lake Chad Basin.” Following a trip to the Lake Chad Basin in March 2017, the UN Security Council, in Resolution 2349, recognized the “adverse effects of climate change and ecological changes among other factors on the stability of the region, including through water scarcity, drought, desertification, land degradation, and food insecurity.”

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