CLIMATE DISPLACEMENT IN THE NEWS
Photo by Amali Tower
A multi-agency report led by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) is attempting to fill a gap in reliable and timely information on climate change in Africa, with the hopes that better information will spur greater climate-related development planning.
Along with the report’s release, WMO’s Regional Strategic Office Director Filipe Lucio called for action on two fronts - adaptation “today” and mitigation “tomorrow.” A point made by a Senegalese economist whose work examines climate change impacts on migration in the Sahel, that we interviewed earlier this year in this PERSPECTIVES piece.
Various strategies are required to address an alarming warming trend in Africa, with northern and southern Africa set to get even drier and hotter, while the Sahel region becomes wetter.
The report offers policy recommendations in several different areas, reflecting the fact that climate change impacts a variety of sectors in complex ways. In particular, the report’s authors note the importance of addressing agricultural impacts, given the industry’s position as the “backbone of Africa’s economy.” Indeed, climate change is a serious threat to food security around the world, an issue inextricably linked to population displacement.
Increasing food insecurity and displacement in Africa is a sinister combination, as the report notes. Refugee populations often live in climate ‘hot spots’, where they are particularly vulnerable to both slow and sudden crises, such as desertification or flooding. This can even result in secondary displacement.
For instance, IOM and UNHCR data indicate, 60% of all internal displacements in the East and Horn of Africa in 2019 were due to climate-induced disasters. In particular, pastoralists are highly vulnerable to the combined effects of drought, resource competition and conflict.
Miami, Florida’s most populous metropolitan area, has long been considered particularly vulnerable to climate change, but this is often limited to considerations of sea-level rise given its position as a low-lying coastal city. Miami’s sea-levels are expected to be 10 to 17 inches (25-43 cm) above 2000 levels, though recent studies have shown the seas are rising faster than expected. While this is undoubtedly a major issue, Miami also faces extreme heat and tropical storms, including hurricanes. Just this year, Miami’s heat index struck new records when temperatures topped 100°F (37.8°C) for 37 consecutive days and 106°F (41.1°C) for 13 days. And while the city has always faced challenges of heat and storms to some extent, climate change is increasing the frequency and severity of these phenomena, with devastating results.
Through community interviews Climate Refugees conducted in Kenya, this report provides an opportunity to identify the specific losses and damages communities are suffering from both sudden and slow onset climate change events, in their own words. We have been intentional about sharing this community storytelling, detailing the essence and heart of the losses they described. And in doing so, we have been conscious not to summarize or dilute the messages conveyed to us, instead seizing a valuable opportunity to share information from affected communities who are not seen and heard as potential, powerful changemakers nearly enough.
Facts and data are plentiful and should be persuasive, but as is our work premise, human impacts are the stories we need to tell, to spur change and filter up to policymakers who need to keep human beings disproportionately affected in the forefront, like our field report from the Sahel’s Lake Chad Basin.
While the report focuses on providing much-needed information for policymakers, it also provides some policy recommendations. For example, the authors highlight the need for strengthened guidance and increased protection for people displaced by environmental degradation and disasters. Additionally, better multi-hazard early warning systems, aimed at reducing the risk of disasters such as typhoons, would undoubtedly help build resilience to a changing climate while reducing the risk of secondary displacement.
In addition to filling information gaps, the report ultimately provides an important reminder that climate policy in Africa requires innovative thinking from policymakers and activists. As Lucio said during the report’s release, “forward thinking analysis” is required in order to anticipate trends and design better, more resilient systems. (UN News)
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)
Head to PERSPECTIVES, featuring stories from the field to learn more about how women and girls are impacted by climate-linked displacement.
In a new report, the Irish NGO Trócaire found weather-related disasters are likely to kill women and girls 14 times more than boys, increase girls chances of being trafficked 30 percent and put women at increased risk of violence during crises and displacement. The report found corporate human rights violations impact women more disproportionately and looking at indigenous, environmental and land rights defenders, Trócaire found them to be at increased and growing risk of violence, evidenced by the fact that in 2019, almost half of the 137 attacks on human rights defenders were against indigenous women in rural communities. (NRC Online)
Analysis
This is a policy editorial that mostly summarizes the state of play with respect to the plight of climate migrants and the current policy discourse based on the worst case climate migration models. The opinion piece does address the legal challenge that climate change falls outside the purview of protected refugee grounds under the 1951 Convention, but fails to include broader refugee definitions in the 1969 OAU Convention and the 1984 Cartagena Declaration.
It also fails to include the recently adopted, albeit non-binding, UN Global Compacts for Migration and Refugees, respectively, which discuss environmental migration and further, UNHCR’s more recent position that refugee law frameworks may apply in situations where nexus dynamics are present - that is, situations where conflict or violence are interconnected to situations linked to climate change or disaster.
Most notably, the author’s belief is that climate migration is voluntary, and while there is certainly a lack of data and full understanding yet on the topic, there are viable and numerous qualitative indicators to suggest that where climate migration interconnects with poverty, development and challenges to security, choice may not be a luxury afforded to many, and certainly not to everyone. (World Politics Review)
With 2.6 million people uprooted by violent clashes and climatic shock in recent times, Somalia became the 30th African state to ratify the African Union Convention for the Protection and Assistance of Internally Displaced Persons in Africa, the first-ever binding treaty dealing with internal displacement. In a press release, the International Committee of the Red Cross commended Somalia’s commitment to the rights of thousands of Somali’s displaced by both conflict and climate change. (ReliefWeb)
