Fear Stops Refugees Getting Tested as Coronavirus Hits Camps

Kalle Kortelainen/UNSPLASH

Aid workers and community leaders interviewed say Rohingya refugee fears of being separated from their families and held in isolation are hampering testing efforts in the crowded Cox’s Bazar refugee complex in Bangladesh. Only one death has been recorded, fears are that the novel Coronavirus may be spreading faster than the 29 confirmed cases as of mid-May. Although 860,000 refugees live in the camp, only 339 tests have been conducted, and one community organizer noted that camp hospitals are empty but makeshift medical shops are busy, where it is presumed refugees are going for self-treatment. IOM noted clinic visits dropped by 50% in March. Yale University researchers, who interviewed hundreds of refugees in April, found about a quarter of interviewees reported at least one Coronavirus symptom. 

The fear is clearly connected to Bangladeshi restrictions on movement as well as internet and mobile communications, which we indicated in an earlier SPOTLIGHT news report, infringe on refugee rights to health and freedom of movement. (Reuters)

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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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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. 

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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)

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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.

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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. 

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