CLIMATE DISPLACEMENT IN THE NEWS
Of those evacuees, The Fiji Times is reporting, 200 include “climate change refugees in Dreketi who were relocated more than a year ago” in the wake of cyclone Ana last year. The 200 villagers were relocated last from Navabatu last January after the storm’s impact sustained cracks in infrastructure.
Dave Hoefler via UNSPLASH
The Australian government has been advised to create a new visa category to allow Pacific Islanders to relocate permanently to Australia in order to mitigate the impact of climate change. The recommendation was detailed in a recent policy paper published by the University of New South Wales’(UNSW) Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law.
The report’s authors Jane McAdam and Jonathan Pryke argue that adaptation alone is insufficient in the case of the many Pacific islands threatened by increasingly frequent and severe weather events as a result of climate change. They also stress that the proposed 3,000-per-year relocation target is far from radical, representing just a “drop in the ocean” in terms of displaced persons.
"If you look at where the trajectory is, unless you have major changes in mitigation and adaptation efforts, we're likely to see more displacement occurring." - Jane McAdam
According to reports, Jonathan Pryke thinks “relocating even a small number of people on a voluntary basis would help ease pressure on vulnerable countries.”
Australia’s Department of Home Affairs declined to respond to a question posed by Australia’s national broadcaster regarding a new visa scheme, instead offering a generic commitment to existing migration pathways open to Pacific Islanders.
This UNSW policy paper involves many important issues, but perhaps the most obvious is its timely reminder that dealing with the impacts of climate change requires a multifaceted approach. While mitigation efforts, such as emissions reduction, are important, the impacts of climate change are severe enough to require adaptation as well, especially in small-island states. Policy recommendations like the UNSW report’s proposed visa scheme must be pursued alongside mitigation strategies if we are serious about addressing the climate crisis.
Despite activists and policymakers discussing relocation of Pacific Islanders for at least a decade, the current government’s record of inaction is not reassuring. When bushfires raged across New South Wales and Queensland in last December, scientists said they were “bewildered” by the lack of focus on the climate crisis by politicians. This was over a year after a joint Medical Journal of Australia-Lancet report warned that Australian inaction on climate change was a public health threat. (ABC News - Australian Broadcasting Corporation)
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.”
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.
Marek Okon via UNSPLASH
Those following climate change news might already know that the 600 islands comprising the Federated States of Micronesia are waging a battle with climate change: mainly rising sea levels. What many may not know is that, outside of Hawaii, Portland is one of the most popular places for Micronesians to relocate in the United States. Whether it be in search of better prospects, reconnections, a changing environment at home or other, many of these new Portland residents worry about the seas overtaking their ancestral homes.
No one seems to know for sure where the connection to Oregon began, but some Micronesians believe, as is usual, a small group of elders who attended Eastern Oregon University might be the diaspora connection.
Now in beautiful testimonials, these Micronesians in Portland speak wistfully of a life once spent on beautiful Pacific Ocean islands and how many, not unlike refugees we have formally resettled all over the world, struggle to maintain their cultural heritage in their newfound homes.
Dexter Moluputo, who grew up on the island Houk, measuring just over one square mile, says life was spent fishing and growing crops, just as his ancestors had for centuries. He says “over there you don’t work for money. Just to eat.”
Now thousands of miles away in a climate and culture vastly different from his home, he thinks longingly of foods found only at home and the precarious plight of his homeland, which could soon become uninhabitable, not only because of rising seas, but because stronger typhoons have spread salt all over the island, rendering crop cultivation almost impossible.
Berely Mack from the Micronesian island of Kapingamarangi says he returned to his home island three years ago in shock, dismay and the undeniable proof of the impacts of climate change when he experienced the water levels at higher ground.
These Pacific Islanders worry for their homelands, worry for their generational lost heritage and the steady sense of disorientation that has come with the loss of living by and off the ocean in this enforced need to transplant roots. But many are forging ahead, bringing their food, culture and way of life with them to their new homes, while worries for their ancestral homes rise, just like its seas. (Portland Tribune)
Although the media and this journalist uses the term ‘climate refugee’, as do we but for different reasons, including to provoke a conversation along lines of protection, justice and equality - see “The Problem” - these Micronesians are not ‘refugees’ in a legal sense since climate change or environmental degradation is not a protected refugee ground in international law. Regardless of terminology though, this article more than demonstrates what is at stake, and beyond forced displacement, as with all displaced people, including refugees, what is lost when one is forced into a life of exile from one’s homeland.
