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(translated) Climate Refugees in the US - Sinking island off New Orleans drives people to flee

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(translated) Climate Refugees in the US - Sinking island off New Orleans drives people to flee

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- Island of Jean Charles in the Gulf of Mexico has sunk from five kilometers width in the 1950s to 300m
- Multiple reasons for this: e..g digging of channels for better access to oil drilling rigs

- Increasingly violent hurricanes due to climate change also play a role in making the island more and more uninhabitable
- Native people (Houma) opposed to Louisiana government resettlement project
- Resist being labeled as modern-day climate refugees, see themselves as being displaced once again

Questions:
What are the drivers behind the sinking of the Island of Jean Charles?

What is native people’s view on government resettlement projects?

How do people being labeled as climate refugees see and label their status themselves?

(Katharina)

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Die Regierung von Louisiana nennt sie die ersten Klimaflüchtlinge der USA. Die Bewohner einer untergehenden Insel selbst sehen sich als Klima-Vertriebene.

Der Arm von Lora-Ann Chaisson zeichnet einen weiten Bogen: "Alles, was ihr hier seht, war einst Land." Heute ist alles Wasser. Und wir sind mittendrin. Lora-Ann Chaisson hat uns mitgenommen auf ihrem kleinen Boot. Hinaus aufs Meer, wo früher kein Meer, sondern ihr Land war. Chaisson ist auf dieser kleinen Insel, die einst hier lag, geboren und aufgewachsen.

Heute lebt sie längst weiter landeinwärts. Denn von der Insel Jean Charles im Golf von Mexiko, vor der Küste Louisianas unweit von New Orleans gelegen, ist nurmehr ein kleiner Streifen Land übrig. 300 Meter ist er noch breit. In den 50er-Jahren waren es noch fünf Kilometer. Doch das meiste davon ist längst im Meer versunken.

Die Gründe für den Untergang von Jean Charles sind vielfältig. "Es begann mit der Entdeckung des Öls", erzählt Lora-Ann Chaisson. Als die Ölbarone das neue Geschäft entdeckten, begannen sie Kanäle durch das weiche Marschland vor Louisiana zu graben, um einfacher an ihre neuen Bohrtürme zu gelangen. "Aber wenn du für einen Bohrturm Land abgräbst, dann solltest du die neu aufgerissenen Ufer sichern." Chaisson ereifert sich. "Doch genau das haben sie nicht getan, und was ihr hier seht, ist die Folge davon."

Von 325 Einwohnern, die vor 20 Jahren noch auf Jean Charles lebten, sind zwölf übriggeblieben. Und auch die sollen die Insel nun verlassen. So wie Lora-Anns Vater Theo, der hier ein kleines Bootscenter führt: "Ich werde nirgendwo anders hingehen. Ich bin 86 Jahre alt und ich liebe diesen Ort."

Kein Vertrauen in die Regierung

Theo Chaisson ist einer der wenigen, der sich einem Umsiedlungsprojekt der Regierung von Louisiana widersetzt und hierbleiben will. "Die Regierung sagt, dass wir auch nach einem Umzug unsere Häuser und alles behalten können."

Doch die Chaissons trauen der Regierung nicht. "Ihr sprecht mit Ureinwohnern. Seit wann sollen wir der Regierung vertrauen? Ich mein, ehrlich ... - schaut, was sie uns angetan haben!" Das ist die nächste Facette.

Denn Lora-Ann Chaisson ist auch Chief der Houma, einem der ursprünglichen Stämme, denen dieses Land einst gehört hatte - bevor es weisse Siedler an sich gerissen und zu den Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika gemacht haben. Auch aufgrund dieser Geschichte wehren sich die Houma und Lora-Ann Chaisson dagegen, als neuzeitige Klimaflüchtlinge bezeichnet zu werden. "Wir sind keine Flüchtlinge. Wir werden ein weiteres Mal vertrieben!"

Wir sind keine Flüchtlinge. Wir werden ein weiteres Mal vertrieben.

Nebst dem Salzwasser, das das Süsswasser immer mehr zurückdrängt, sind es die zuletzt immer heftiger werdenden Hurrikans, die Jean Charles immer unbewohnbarer machten. Vor allem der letzte, Ida, der Louisiana Ende letzten Jahres traf: "Sie sagen: Ida, das war wie Katrina, einfach auf Steroiden."

Lora-Ann Chaisson steht vor zwei Karten des Marschlandes vor New Orleans, jener Stadt, welche am 29. August 2005 so heftig von jenem Hurrikan getroffen wurde. Eine Karte zeigt ein volles Land und ist aus den 50er-Jahren. Die andere zeigt nur noch wenige Landpunkte inmitten von blauem Meer und ist von heute. "Hurrikan Katrina kam, fegte hier draussen über uns hinweg und hinterliess eine Menge Schaden. Aber Ida hörte einfach nicht auf, sich zu drehen, sondern blieb und blieb und blieb".

Dass die Hurrikans immer heftiger werden, ist eine inzwischen gut dokumentierte, direkte Folge des Klimawandels. Die Erwärmung der Meere führt dazu, dass sich Hurrikans schneller mit Energie aufladen als zuvor. Aufgrund der Verdunstung laden sie sich schneller und mit grösseren Wassermassen auf. Die Folgen sind verheerend.

Und weil vor der Küste Louisianas immer mehr Land verschwindet, das zuvor als Barriere mildernd gewirkt hatte, ist das Ganze ein Teufelskreis. Ein Teufelskreis, dem die Bewohnerinnen und Bewohner von Jean Charles nur noch ohnmächtig zusehen können.

10 vor 10, 29.09.2022, 21:50 Uhr

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Klimaflüchtlinge in den USA - Versinkende Insel vor New Orleans treibt Menschen in die Flucht

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Die Regierung von Louisiana nennt sie die ersten Klimaflüchtlinge der USA. Die Bewohner einer untergehenden Insel selbst sehen sich als Klima-Vertriebene. Der Arm von Lora-Ann Chaisson zeichnet einen weiten Bogen: "Alles, was ihr hier seht, war einst Land." Heute ist alles Wasser. Und wir sind mittendrin.

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3.4 million people have been displaced by flooding in west and central Africa

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3.4 million people have been displaced by flooding in west and central Africa

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Key points:

-       More than 3.4 million people have been displaced due to flooding in west and central Africa

-       Nigeria’s worst floods in a decade have killed hundreds, and 1.3 million residents have been displaced.

-       The climate crisis is happening now, and the link to displacement is “clear and growing”

-       Floods in Chad, Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso have also led to hundreds of deaths, even more displaced (in Chad alone 1 million)

-       In contrast, the Horn of Africa is faced with the worst drought in 40 years

-       Nigeria is faced with floods every year due to failing infrastructure and “non-adherence to environmental guidelines”. Authorities blame in part the release of excess water from a dam in neighbouring region in Cameroon.

Some questions:

How are the effects of climate change felt by countries in Central and Western Africa? What other explanations exist for such extreme floods? What are the results of these floods for people?

(Emmanuelle)

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Advocates Push for Canada to Protect Climate Migrants 

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Advocates Push for Canada to Protect Climate Migrants 

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Key points:

-       Group of Canadian lawyers pushing for changes in Canadian immigration policy to better account for displacement or migration related to climate change as numbers rise

-       Climate migrants are not recognized under current law, and so the term needs to be legally defined and adopted by legislation

-       There are existing policy options within Canadian immigration law that could be applied to climate-related migrants

-       It’s important to note that Canada is also experiencing internal migration related to climate impacts

-       This notably impacts Indigenous communities (such as First Nations, Inuit, and Métis) who have not only been faced with continuous forced displacement by settlers, but are also disproportionately affected by climate change.

Some Questions:

How can Canadian immigration law better account for and protect climate migrants? Can existing immigration law in Canada successfully account for and protect incoming climate migrants? How is Canada dealing with internally displaced climate migrants, especially Indigenous peoples?

(Emmanuelle)

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Prepare for mass migration to cities in climate crisis, UK mayors warn (the Guardian)

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Prepare for mass migration to cities in climate crisis, UK mayors warn (the Guardian)

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-      What is mass migration to cities like right now and what is it going to look like in the future?

-       What have the mayors of London and Bristol done so far to tackle climate emergency-related migration?

-      What can national governments do to assist cities in their efforts?

-       What role can cities play in tackling climate-emergency caused migration globally?

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Title in English: Climate migrations. From where and where do people move due to the effects of climate change.   

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Title in English: Climate migrations. From where and where do people move due to the effects of climate change.   

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URL: https://iq.hse.ru/news/645594361.html

Short-term natural disasters and long-term climatic processes - from rising sea levels to melting glaciers and soil degradation - make people want to move to where it is safer and where there are no problems with food and water.  Recently, more and more people are forced to move to safe and livable places.
This article, published on June 6, 2022, answers questions about who are climate migrants, who is most affected, what are the consequences of climate change, which threatens drylands.
Which areas are most vulnerable to climate change?
There are three types of such territories: coasts and islands, arid regions and mountainous regions.  Permafrost regions deserve special attention, where migration flows can increase with the activation of ice melting.
For coasts and islands, the main risks are associated with rising sea levels.  Since 1993, it has increased by almost 10 cm. In the last decade, the annual growth rate is 3.6 mm.  Sea level rise forecasts range from 0.3 to 1.1 m by the end of the century.  This means the threat of flooding of low coastal areas.  In Europe alone, 13 million people could be affected by a rise in the level of the World Ocean by one meter.  In this sense, the population of the coastal territories of the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Poland, and Denmark is vulnerable.  But the most vulnerable are the densely populated countries of South and Southeast Asia.  An increase in sea level by half a meter could lead to the migration of 5.5 million people in Bangladesh alone.

By Aiperi Atakanova

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Inform people about climate change to reduce conflict, violence with migrants in South Africa (Gabriel)

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Inform people about climate change to reduce conflict, violence with migrants in South Africa (Gabriel)

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-      How are people in South-East Africa affected by climate change and its destructive consequences?
Which population group suffers the most from natural disasters
caused by climate change?

-      How have women dealt with these natural disasters?

-     Why do climate refugees come to South Africa?

-      How are climate refugees treated in South Africa?
What can be done to improve the situation of climate refugees in South Africa right now and in the future (in particular of women)?

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East Africa and the Horn light the way for climate migrants

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East Africa and the Horn light the way for climate migrants

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Paul Gross

- In 2021, 2.6 million people in Sub-Saharan Africa were displaced due to environmental disasters, driving internal and cross-country migration.

- The interrelatedness of climate change and migration is increasingly acknowledged at all levels in Africa in legal and policy framework. With the Kampala Declaration and the IGAD protocol, East Africa and the Horn have recognized environmental migration as an adaptation strategy that should be facilitated.

Questions:

- What is environmental migration in East Africa and what are its causes?

- What is the role of regional cooperation in the area – especially the Kampala Declaration and the IGAD protocol –  for environmental migration?

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Climate migration is rising – but ‘home’ remains very dear to the displaced

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Climate migration is rising – but ‘home’ remains very dear to the displaced

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Paul Gross

Interview with Elizabeth Fussell, professor at Brown University.

- Anticipatory environmental migration is becoming more common, as people decide to move away while they still have choices.

-  Social inequalities tend to be exacerbated by disasters.

- People whose homes are threatened by climate change may feel an increased bond to their place. Those who leave their home remain attached to it.

Questions:
- What are causes for environmental migration and which regions are most affected by displacements?

- How do social inequalities factor into environmental migration?

- How is one’s attachment to a place affected by environmental migration?

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Vanishing Land: Climate Change displaces Black Families along Gulah-Geechee corridor

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Vanishing Land: Climate Change displaces Black Families along Gulah-Geechee corridor

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Gullah-Geechee corridor is a National Heritage Area for historically displaced Black communities erected to recognize culture and preserve heritage of descendants of the enslaved

With rapid sea level rise and disasters and flooding becoming worse and worse, more and more people in the historic Gullah communities are forced to leave their land --> people in the corridor are "some of the most climate-threatened people in the world"

demonstrates an illustrative example of displacement of Black communities due to a combination of climate-related events, land loss and unaffordability

policies such as the National Flood Insurance Program are not prepared for chronic climate change-related disasters

Michael Allen, a retired Park ranger in the Gullah area argues that an equitable climate relocation should aim to ensure continuation of lineage, heritage and culture of those forced to migrate

QUESTIONS:
How are Black communities living in the coastal Gullah-Corridor in South Carolina, USA, (negatively) affected by climate change? How are historically-grown socio-economic and spatial inequalities exacerbated along racial divides?

POSSIBLE RESEARCH QUESTION: How can adaptation strategies be improved to better target affected and under-resourced communities from a decolonial and environmental justice perspective?
More specifically, how can climate-related relocation strategies be designed in a bottom-up and participatory way to work towards more equitable and decolonial adaptation that seeks to preserve cultural heritage?

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Melba Newsome Special to The Post and Courier

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Vanishing land: Climate change displaces Black families along Gullah-Geechee corridor

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Black coastal communities are being displaced by a combination of climate-related events, land loss and unaffordability, leaving people along the Gullah-Geechee corridor among the most climate-threatened people in the world.

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In the Face of Climate Change, Migration Offers an Adaptation Strategy in Africa

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In the Face of Climate Change, Migration Offers an Adaptation Strategy in Africa

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https://www.iom.int/news/face-climate-change-migration-offers-adaptation-strategy-africa

The selected news pieces present migration-based adaptation strategies to climate change.

By focusing on actions taken by low-income countries these are portrayed as active agents of climate adaptation. Simultaneously, migration is used as a solution strategy and not only portrayed as a problem.

In African countries people have employed diverse strategies of migration to handle the climatic conditions (e.g. the nomadic population)

Migration is recognised as source of resilience

African states recognise migration as "development enabler"

Questions posed by the Author:

What role can migration have in the sphere of climate adaptation?

How did people(s) deal with changing climate conditions in the past?

To what extent is migration as a solution to climate change voiced by (African) states?

Gaps:

The comittment by the states seems to be rather wea (no concrete proposals beyond vague statements)

Potential research Questions:

Which social institutions enable nomadic migration and how can these be tranferred to other cases of climate migration?

(Leonard Weber)

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Libreville - Countries around the world are feeling the impacts of climate change, which is affecting their communities. In Africa, migration induced by slow onset events such as droughts, desertification, deforestation, water scarcity, rising sea levels, and coastal erosion has increased in occurrence and severity over the last few decades due to the adverse effects of climate change.

The Africa Climate Week, organized from 29 August to 2 September, presented an opportunity for African countries to discuss regional climate action solutions ahead of the 27th Conference of the Parties of the UNFCCC (COP27), the global climate change forum that will take place in Egypt in November.

Human mobility in Africa carries a long history and is a key driver for the resilience of communities. As part of the 2063 African Union Agenda and the Global Compact for Migration objectives, there is now recognition that migration can become a development enabler, a strategy to improve sustainable livelihoods, and adapt to environmental pressures and climate change.

The West and Central Africa region accounted for 265,400 internally displaced persons (IDPs) due to disasters (such as floods, storms, or landslides), approximately 3 per cent of total IDPs, as of the end of 2021, according to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre. And so far in 2022, the Republic of Congo has been the most affected country, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), followed by Chad, Liberia, Nigeria, and Niger. Eleven countries are considered flooding hotspots by OCHA in 2022, including Chad, Côte d'Ivoire, and The Gambia.

In the East and Horn of Africa, a fourth consecutive year of drought in the region has engendered loss of livestock and livelihoods, leaving millions of people severely affected in Kenya, Somalia, and Ethiopia, and pushing tens of thousands of families to leave their homes in search of food, water and pasture, many to urban areas.

"These figures compel us to collaborate to design sustainable solutions for people to stay, sustainable solutions for people on the move, and sustainable solutions for people to move," said Caroline Dumas, IOM Director General's Special Envoy on Migration and Climate Action. "Designing such solutions implies not only cooperation and intersectoral policy dialogue and policy coherence, but also to look at the solutions communities are already developing."

For a continent hosting 37 per cent of the world's nomadic population, labour migration has always been a way for rain-fed rural communities to cope with environmental pressures.

"While there has been growing recognition of human mobility in the context of climate change in the global narrative, funding sources remain scarce," added Ambassador Caroline Dumas at the Africa Climate Week. "African stakeholders often stress the lack of accessibility of climate finance by the communities who need it most. We need to contribute to address this important issue altogether."

Last month, Member States from the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), the East African Community and the States of East and Horn of Africa, signed the Kampala Declaration on Migration, Environment and Climate Change. The signatory states urgently call for the world to respond to the impact of climate change on human mobility across the region and continent, and support affected communities, who are among the world's most vulnerable, to adapt to climate change realities. This declaration also recognizes the need for creating and increasing investment in green economy, such as circular economy, renewable energy and energy efficiency, climate smart agriculture, digital economy, and nature-based solutions.

***
For more information please contact: In West and Central Africa: Hind Aïssaoui Bennani, Regional Thematic Specialist on Migration, Environment and Climate Change, haissaoui@iom.int In East and Horn of Africa: Lisa Lim Ah Ken, Regional Thematic Specialist on Migration, Environment and Climate Change, llimahken@iom.int

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In the Face of Climate Change, Migration Offers an Adaptation Strategy in Africa

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Libreville - Countries around the world are feeling the impacts of climate change, which is affecting their communities. In Africa, migration induced by slow onset events such as droughts, desertification, deforestation, water scarcity, rising sea levels, and coastal erosion has increased in occurrence and severity over the last few decades due to the adverse effects of climate change.

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How 'transformative adaptation' in the Bangladesh coastal town of Mongla became a 'safe home for climate refugees'

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How 'transformative adaptation' in the Bangladesh coastal town of Mongla became a 'safe home for climate refugees'

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The selected news pieces present migration-based adaptation strategies to climate change.

By focusing on actions taken by low-income countries these are portrayed as active agents of climate adaptation. Simultaneously, migration is used as a solution strategy and not only portrayed as a problem.

=> counternarrative to a discourse that conceptualizes:
- migration as a problem and
- low-income countries solely as passive victims entirely dependent on the help by other actors (e.g. countries of the Global North).

Questions asked:
How does Bangladesh cope with the incumbent internal (climate) migration?
What are opportunities/potential positive outcomes of migration?

Potential Research Question:
Under what conditions does the influx of labour force to a local labour market lead to non-negative effects for hitherto existing working conditions (including wages)?

[Leonard Weber]

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First cases of “climate refugees” in the United States of America

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First cases of “climate refugees” in the United States of America

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The Isle de Jean Charles, Louisiana (land of the Isle de Jean Charles Band of Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw Indians) is now deserted due to sea level rise. On September 2nd 2022 its last inhabitants officially leave the island. US American media announces “the first climate refugees in the US”. The article thus analyses the usage of the word refugee in this context and raises the questions of whether these were the first climate refugees in the US.

Questions:

Are they refugees without having crossed a border?

Does the legal status of “climate refugee” exist?

Were the inhabitants of the Isle de Jean Charles really the first US American climate refugees? What makes them different from others displaced by natural disasters?

Who is financing the relocation of these people?

Why is the island disappearing into the sea?

What does this mean for displaced persons in other areas of the world, especially the Global South?

(Francesca)

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Vue aérienne de l'île Jean-Charles en Louisiane le 24 août 2022 CECILE CLOCHERET / AFP

La dernière dizaine d'habitants de l'île de Jean-Charles, en Louisiane, a été contrainte de déménager à cause de la montée des eaux.

L'île de Jean-Charles, en Louisiane (États-Unis), est désormais déserte. Le territoire de trois kilomètres de long sur 300 mètres de large a vu, vendredi 2 septembre, ses derniers habitants officiellement déménager dans la ville de Schriever. La raison ? L'inexorable montée des eaux. Les médias américains les ont d'ores et déjà rebaptisés " les premiers réfugiés climatiques des États-Unis ". Cette expression médiatique désigne des personnes ou groupes de personnes forcées de quitter un lieu pour des raisons environnementales (d'origine naturelle ou humaine) qui ont mis en péril leur existence ou sérieusement affecté leurs conditions de vie.

Cependant, concernant les anciens pensionnaires de l'île, l'appellation " réfugiés" n'est pas exacte stricto sensu. " Le statut de réfugié implique le fait d'être contraint de traverser une frontière pour assurer sa sécurité", explique Céline Schmitt, responsable des relations extérieures et porte-parole de l'Agence des Nations unies pour les réfugiés à Paris(HCR). Or, dans le cas de l'île de Jean-Charles, les habitants sont relogés dans le même État. Il est donc plus juste de parler de " déplacés climatiques". De plus, " le statut juridique de réfugié climatique n'existe pas, c'est un langage politique ou médiatique ", précise Céline Schmitt. L'ONU a beau avoir ouvert la porte en 2020 à une reconnaissance des réfugiés climatique, le projet n'a pas abouti.

À lire aussi Le classement des villes françaises les plus menacées par la montée du niveau des océans

L'expression de " premiers réfugiés climatiques des États-Unis" est aussi à nuancer. Les derniers habitants de l'île de Jean-Charles sont en effet les premiers à être relogés gratuitement pour des raisons climatiques aux États-Unis. Le pays a cependant vu 56.000 de ses compatriotes être obligés de se déplacer à cause d'une catastrophe naturelle en 2021, selon le Centre de surveillance des déplacements internes.

La superficie de la petite bande de terre de Jean-Charles a diminué d'année en année, grignotée inlassablement par l'eau salée. Depuis 1930, l'île a perdu 90% de son territoire, rapporte l' AFP. Bâtie à 60 kilomètres du bayou, la ville de Schriever se compose de 30 pavillons spacieux construits uniquement pour accueillir les déplacés.

Des maisons entièrement financées par l'État grâce à une aide fédérale au relogement de 48 millions de dollars accordée à la Louisiane en 2016. " On n'est qu'au début du réchauffement climatique et de ses conséquences, on se devait de protéger ces personnes pour qu'elles restent proches de chez elles dans un endroit sécurisé", explique à France Info John Bel Edwards, gouverneur de la Louisiane. Malgré le confort de vie qu'offre ce relogement, les nouveaux résidents de Pelican Lane - lotissement où ils ont été relogés - gardent la nostalgie de l'île de Jean-Charles, une terre amérindienne où les derniers habitants descendent de la tribu francophone des Houmas. " L'île sera toujours la maison de mon cœur", jure à l' AFP Bert Naquin nouvelle habitante de Schriever.

Une situation aux origines naturelles et humaines

La situation de l'île de Jean-Charles est devenue préoccupante dès 2005 lorsque l'ouragan Katrina a ravagé la Louisiane. Situé à la pointe du golfe du Mexique, le territoire est en première ligne lors de la saison des ouragans. La montée des eaux a tué toutes les possibilités d'agriculture ou de végétation. " Ce que j'ai vu évoluer, c'est l'érosion autour de l'île. Il y a tellement d'arbres qui sont morts à cause de l'intrusion de l'eau salée. Sur notre terrain, juste ici, il y avait 15 arbres quand j'étais petit. Ils ne sont plus là aujourd'hui", affirme Chris à France Info , nouveau déplacé.

Le réchauffement climatique provoque la montée du niveau de l'océan mais il n'en est pas le seul responsable. L'île de Jean-Charles se trouve au milieu du delta du fleuve Mississippi. Une particularité géographique qui provoque l'affaissement de l'île sous l'eau. Un phénomène naturel, appelé subsidence, accentué par l'activité humaine. " La Louisiane cumule deux facteurs pour expliquer la subsidence : un delta actif et une prospection minière importante", détaillait dans nos colonnes en 2015 Thomas Doyle, directeur du centre national de recherche sur les zones marécageuses. L'industrie pétrolière de Louisiane, l'une des plus productives des États-Unis, a énormément fragilisé le bayou. On ne compte pas moins de 15.000 kilomètres de canaux creusés pour laisser passer les pétroliers. Ces passages ont brisé les barrières naturelles de l'île et ont permis à l'eau de mer de pénétrer.

Un phénomène qui se mondialise

Le nombre de déplacés et de réfugiés climatiques est en constante augmentation dans le monde. Toutes les régions du globe sont touchées. Au Sahel, une terrible sécheresse frappe plus d'un million de personnes qui sont contraintes de changer de pays. Au Pakistan, des inondations historiques touchent 33 millions d'habitants. Parmi eux, certains sont obligés d'émigrer dans d'autres pays, rapporte le HCR. " La question n'est pas tellement de savoir si le statut de réfugié climatique doit être reconnu ; il faut plus réfléchir à comment prévenir les catastrophes naturelles ", analyse Céline Schmitt.

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Des premiers cas de "réfugiés climatiques" aux États-Unis

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La dernière dizaine d'habitants de l'île de Jean-Charles, en Louisiane, a été contrainte de déménager à cause de la montée des eaux. L'île de Jean-Charles, en Louisiane (États-Unis), est désormais déserte. Le territoire de trois kilomètres de long sur 300 mètres de large a vu, vendredi 2 septembre, ses derniers habitants officiellement déménager dans la ville de Schriever.

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Climate migration front and centre at COP27 in Egypt

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Climate migration front and centre at COP27 in Egypt

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- The climate crisis is expected to create the largest human displacement in modern history

- Emitters like Canada have to recognize their responsibility to climate migrants

-Canadians have a misunderstanding about climate migration. Not extreme weather events, but agricultural impacts are the main driver forcing people to leave their communities.

- climate and economic migration are almost always connected now

- global leaders mostly focus on “managed migration”- “controlling the flow of people”

Questions:
What role does climate migration play in (international) climate discussions? How is it framed?

What does climate justice have to do with migrant justice?

What are the drivers of climate migration?

Is climate migration distinct from economic migration?

What is Canada’s responsibility to countries already severely affected by climate change and climate migrants?

(Katharina)

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First in a two-part series examining the impact of climate change on migration and economic refugees - Partnership with Ricochet.

The climate crisis is expected to create the largest human displacement in modern history. As many as a billion could be displaced over the coming decades, as more and more people are forced to leave their homes and communities because of floods, droughts, extreme weather events, wildfires, conflict and extreme heat.

At the United Nations Climate Change Conference, COP27, in Egypt this week, representatives from countries in the Global South will once again be asking major emitters like Canada to recognize their responsibility to the of climate migrants.

Caroline Brouillette, national policy manager for Climate Action Canada, a coalition of more than 100 environmental groups across the country, says fighting the climate crisis is about more than reducing emissions: It's about how humanity takes care of the most vulnerable.

"Migrant justice is part of climate justice," Brouillette said. "Canada has a responsibility to contribute to international climate finance to help countries in the Global South, not only mitigate their emissions, but to compensate them for losses and damages resulting from climate change."

"We also have a responsibility to care for people by welcoming people and granting them full human rights and a safe home."

The Alliance of Small Island States has drawn up for a loss and damage response fund - which UN chief António Guterres advocates be funded by a windfall tax on oil and gas companies' profits .

"Canada is one of the larger emitters in the world, both per capita and in absolute terms. This is part of Canada's larger climate debt," Brouillette said. "The science tells us that extreme climate events are made more intense and frequent as the global temperature warms."

Hazards resulting from the increasing intensity and frequency of extreme weather events are already causing millions to leave their homes and move to other areas within their borders, as well as neighbouring countries, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

Intersectional effects of climate change on migration

In 2020, more than 30 million people were internally displaced by extreme weather events. By the end of the century, the homelands of 280 million people could be permanently submerged due to rising sea levels, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate.

Syed Hussan, executive director of the Migrant Workers Alliance for Change, said Canadians have a misunderstanding about climate migration. "It is completely centred around the idea of extreme weather events, which is actually the minority of what climate migration looks like. It's not all floods and hurricanes and typhoons."

Agricultural impacts are the main driver forcing people to leave their communities, he said, such as reduced crop outcomes, livestock becoming ill and dying, and changes in agricultural practices.

In Sri Lanka over the last decade, extreme weather events have seriously damaged the country's fisheries and agriculture, including the country's tea industry. People in rural areas who would normally rely on these industries have been forced to move, prompting a steady migration to urban areas and even overseas.

Ishanka Ratnayake, a farmer in Sri Lanka's Uva province, said he's seen massive rains wipe out not only houses, but also the crops on which he and other farmers rely. "Farmers talk about climate change with the rain, which has become unpredictable," he said.

As the farmland has deteriorated, Ratnayake has been trying to support his community through mutual aid projects.

"The kind of migration we are seeing most," said Hussan, of the Migrant Workers Alliance, "is people being forced to move out of villages into towns, and out of towns into cities. Climate migration isn't actually this tidal wave of humanity rushing away from extreme weather events."

Climate migration represents the breaking down of subsistence communities throughout the Global South, leading to hunger, desperation, and diminished resources, he said. "There's also conflict and war happening as a result of, and on top of, the climate emergency."

Anna Triandafyllidou, a professor at Toronto Metropolitan University and the Canada Excellence Research Chair in Migration and Integration, said people who are forced to migrate often don't consider themselves climate migrants. "People are not often aware that environmental degradation" is what's driving them from their homes," she said.

Triandafyllidou is leading a team of 37 researchers who just received a $2.49 million grant to investigate migration systems, including environmental and climate factors. Environmental factors that cause degradation and impact production systems set off a chain reaction, she said. "It then depends on whether governments can support their people, or whether the people find solutions themselves."

Hussan said climate and economic migration are almost always connected now. "Climate is not separate from the economy, which is not separate from cultural and agricultural practices.

"It's this intricate web of capitalism, global finance, massive agri-food production. There's so many ways that the deterioration of ecology is forcing people to move."

In June, catastrophic floods hit Pakistan, putting a third of the country under water and displacing eight million people. As many as 5.7 million people will face a starvation crisis in the coming months, the Associated Press reports.

Canada's "climate debt"

Canada's responsibility to these countries must account for the disproportionate damage done throughout history, Hussan said. "We are talking about 150 years of greenhouse gas emissions... Canada's carbon footprint is massive compared to Pakistan and Sri Lanka."

Brouillette and the Climate Action coalition recently to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, asking him to take bold action in support of refugees and migrants fleeing the climate crisis and global conflict. "Your government has repeatedly championed the vision of Canada as a welcoming, diverse safe haven," she wrote. "The reality for many migrants, however, is still one of uncertainty, fear, and exploitation."

Global climate talks started this week in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, the first such meeting to take place on the African continent. Though it's home to nearly a fifth of the world's population and the devastating impacts of climate change are being felt in each of its nations, Africa is responsible for just three per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions.

Losses and damages to climate-vulnerable countries are on the agenda and expected to be central to discussions. A by the Loss and Damage Collaboration, has found that profits from just six fossil fuel companies from the first half of 2022 would be enough to offset the financial impacts of extreme weather and climate-related events in developing countries around the world.

At COP27, Hussan expects global leaders to once again shift the focus away from financially supporting countries in the Global South to discussions around "managed migration" - that includes moving people to places "where they will be exploited as workers."

"Managed migration is really about controlling the flow of people," he said. "For Canada and the U.S., the discussion is largely around limiting who can enter your borders.

"What needs to happen is people need to be able to stay in their homes, and not be forced to migrate in the first place. But if they do, people need equal rights wherever they arrive."

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Climate migration front and centre at COP27 in Egypt

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First in a two-part series examining the impact of climate change on migration and economic refugees - Partnership with Ricochet. The climate crisis is expected to create the largest human displacement in modern history.

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UNHCR: One million people displaced by drought in Somalia

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UNHCR: One million people displaced by drought in Somalia

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- Somalia is witnessing a two-year historic dry spell
- More and more families are forced to leave everything behind because there is literally no water or food left in their villages.
- Hunger levels increase due to the effects of climate change, and rising food prices because of the conflict in Ukraine.
- The international community must step up to save lives and support this humanitarian response.

Question:
Why are 1 million people displaced?

Possible Research Question:
How can displacement risks be reduced in Somalia?

(Mira Kraus)

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[translation] Climate migration in the Central American dry corridor

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[translation] Climate migration in the Central American dry corridor

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- ecosystems have been severely affected, leading to droughts and water shortages
- there is still very little literature on climate migration
- Individuals don't emigrate because of the droughts, instead due to lack of food and the lost income that are brought about by them.
- It is difficult to isolate the environmental causes that lead to migration, because there are multiple factors interacting.

Questions:
- How do the consequences of climate change affect the Central American dry corridor?
- What are difficulties in the analysis of climate migration?

Possible Reasearch Question:
How does climate change influence the economic situation of inhabitants of the Central American dry corridor?

(Mira Kraus)

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Germany's "climate refugees", Zeit Online, 06/22

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Germany's "climate refugees", Zeit Online, 06/22

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Available only in german: Flutkatastrophe im Ahrtal: Deutschlands Klimaflüchtlinge | ZEIT ONLINE

Report on “Germany’s climate refugees” after last year’s flood in Ahrtal, Germany. The report superficially illustrates the impact of the flood on residents and their lives.

Tells story of two different families who were heavily affected by the flood and lost their home and restaurant.

Focuses on emotions and personal stories

However, just a small section about global environmental migration. Chapter headline: “Million climate refugees worldwide? Now also in Germany?” → Equalisation of “clime refugees”

Questions?

Million climate refugees worldwide? Now also in Germany?

How do affected people deal with their situation?

How does the behaviour of affected people differ?

How scared/aware are people in terms of future weather disasters?

What should be done to prevent events like these?

(Konrad)

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Flutkatastrophe im Ahrtal : Deutschlands Klimaflüchtlinge

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Hoch geht es, noch höher, Hündin Elly japst, aber hoch ist gut. Hoch ist sicher. Hier oben, am Rand des Ortes Adenau in der Hocheifel, geht der Blick von Martina und Heiko Mattschall über satte Wiesen, hier streichen Handwerker den Putz glatt an dem Neubau, in dem die jetzt wohnt.

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Climate Flight Within Germany: Some Areas Are Not Inhabitable Anymore (published 21.07.2022) 

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Climate Flight Within Germany: Some Areas Are Not Inhabitable Anymore (published 21.07.2022) 

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https://www.nationalgeographic.de/umwelt/2022/07/klimaflucht-innerhalb-deutschlands-manche-flaechen-sind-nicht-mehr-besiedelbar

(Lucia Behring)

- Since the massive floods in Ahrtal in Germany, the German Bundesamt für Bevölkerungsschutz (Office for Civil Protection) is concerned with defining areas in Germany that are vulnerable to climate change risks (floods, storms)
- That climate change poses a severe risk to certain areas needs to be addressed through risk-management policies
- The Office for Civil Protection is also starting to draft re-settling programmes for certain areas when the riskmanagement does not suffice
- However, the focus is first on adaptation, then on resettling

Questions:
- How can increasing climate change risks be addressed on local levels?
- What measures can be taken so that resettling can be avoided?

Possible Research Question:
- What measures can be installed to effectively contirbute to adaptation to increasing climate risks to avoid massive resettling schemes?

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Klimaflucht innerhalb Deutschlands: Manche Flächen sind nicht mehr besiedelbar

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Auch in Deutschland gibt es laut dem Präsidenten des Amts für Bevölkerungsschutz einige Orte, die aufgrund extremer Wetterlagen nicht mehr besiedelt werden sollten. Sind Umsiedlungen zum Schutz der Menschen bald unvermeidbar?

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Climate change: The roar of the sea displaces the natives

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Climate change: The roar of the sea displaces the natives

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- Because of overpopulation, sea level rise and garbage brought by the sea tides the residents of the Guna Yala region have to leave their current homes in the coming decades.
- The displacement process is starting with Gardí Sudbug, the island facing the most pressing dangers. The relocation site is 15 minutes from their current residence.
- The natives lay a big emphasis on kepping their culture and customs intact even in the new environment.
- The new housing complex is built with modern facilities which don't mirror the Guna Yala people's current sanitary customs, so the authorities hae launced training programs as well.
- The sea level rose with an avarage of 2 mm per ear in the last 100 years but the process shows acceleration (2.4 mm) in the last 50 years.

Questions:
- Will a successful displacement program mean the imitation of the same measures elsewhere?
- Is it possible to keep the native culture and tradition in a completely new environment?

(Luca Ali)

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Cambio climático: El rugir del mar desplaza a los originarios

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La población de Gardí Subdug en Guna Yala, Panamá, será el primer desplazamiento humano de América Latina provocado por el cambio climático. El hacinamiento es otra de las razones por las que dejarán la isla y algunas costumbres. ¿Cuánto impactará el movimiento poblacional a la cultura de los gunas?…

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Climate Change: Morocco must expect increasing migration flows (published 16.11.2022)

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Climate Change: Morocco must expect increasing migration flows (published 16.11.2022)

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https://lematin.ma/express/2022/changement-climatique-maroc-aura-flux-migratoire-croissants/383236.html

(Lucia Behring)

- Article describes how the interplay of climate change, low-developped African agricultural sectors and a growing population will lead to increasing poverty in many Southern African countries
- This will subsequently lead to migration flows to Europe --> will put specifically Northern African 'migratory transition' countries under pressure
- Article focuses on Morocco as one of those countries
- Morocco thereby becomes a country with stark immigration and emigration (although emigration is decreasing with increasingly selective migration policies of European countries)
- This poses many challenges for Moroccan economy and society, the article describes national policy plans the Moroccan government issued in order to address the migratory flows in the country (legalization and regularization of migrants)

Questions:
- What challenges do climate-induced migratory flows pose for 'countries of transit' that are neither start nor end of the migration?
- How can these countries address/support migrants?
- How might migration flows alter demographic situations of 'countries of transit'?

Possible Research Question:
- What are the consequences of increasing climate-induced migratory flows on 'countries of transit' and how can they be addressed through national policy?

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Selon le HCP, le Maroc devra s'attendre à des flux migratoires croissants en provenance du sud du Sahara compte tenu des effets des changements climatiques qui accentuent les difficultés de l'Afrique en matière de croissance économique et du développement social.

En Afrique, et sur un plan économique, le changement climatique entraînerait une perte des 2/3 des terres arables d'ici 2030 (FAO) et une perte de 5 à 15% de la croissance de son PIB par habitant (BAD). Sur le plan social, le changement climatique pourrait faire passer près de 43 millions d'Africains supplémentaires sous le seuil de pauvreté d'ici 2030. Ce constat est dressé par le haut-commissaire au Plan, Ahmed Lahlimi Alami, qui rappelle que "malgré sa richesse en ressources naturelles, l' Afrique reste, en termes de développement, à la traîne par rapport aux autres régions du monde, handicapée notamment par le faible niveau de développement de ses infrastructures et une prépondérance de son secteur informel en raison particulièrement de la faible productivité de son secteur agricole".

S'exprimant lors d'une rencontre-débat organisée à Rabat par le Haut-Commissariat au Plan ( HCP) et le Fonds des Nations unies pour la population (UNFPA) dans le cadre de la célébration de l'atteinte du seuil des 8 milliards par la population mondiale, sous le thème "Les trajectoires et défis démographiques", M. Lahlimi Alami a souligné que "l'Afrique subsaharienne devrait voir sa population augmenter pour passer de près de 1,17 à 2,11 milliards en 2050". "Ce croît démographique, qui s'accompagne d'une population en âge de travailler de plus en plus importante et qui voit dans les pays du Nord l'une des solutions pour échapper au chômage et à la pauvreté, exacerberait la pression sur les pays de la rive sud de la Méditerranée comme lieu de passage obligé vers l'Europe".

Le Maroc devient de plus en plus un pays d'immigration

"Dans ce contexte régional, le Maroc, pendant longtemps, pays de transit, devient de plus en plus un pays d'immigration, sous l'effet d'une politique migratoire de plus en plus sélective de la part des pays européens. Il est ainsi confronté à la pression de flux migratoires croissants venant du sud du Sahara", affirme le haut-commissaire au Plan. De par sa situation géographique, située au carrefour des deux espaces européen et africain, le Maroc, fait savoir M. Lahlimi Alami, "se trouve au cœur de cette réalité de la frontière entre ces deux mondes à évolutions démographique et économique contrastées et affronte tous les jours les difficultés de sa gestion, étant lui-même à la fois source d'émigration, pendant longtemps pays de transit et aujourd'hui pays de séjour d'immigrés". L' Europe, poursuit-il, la plus grande puissance économique du monde, constitue naturellement un des pôles d'attraction de l'immigration exacerbée par la proximité des pays du Sud et par la multiplication des foyers de crises géostratégiques à travers le monde, alors qu'elle devrait connaître un déclin de sa population, passant de 743 millions d'habitants aujourd'hui à près de 703 millions en 2050.

Par ailleurs, le Maroc, partie intégrante de l'Afrique, de par la géographie, l'histoire et la communauté de destin, est toujours très solidaire de ce continent avant et après son indépendance et aujourd'hui dans la lutte pour son développement. "C'est ainsi que, malgré ses propres problèmes économiques, le Maroc, le premier investisseur africain en Afrique, prévoit de contribuer au développement des infrastructures africaines où le Gazoduc Nigeria-Maroc est l'un des projets phares du continent. Ce dernier constitue "plus qu'un projet bilatéral entre deux pays frères", comme l'a souligné Sa Majesté le Roi Mohammed VI que Dieu L'assiste, ses effets devront profiter à l'ensemble de la région de l'Afrique de l'Ouest", a relevé M. Lahlimi Alami.

En matière de gestion des flux migratoires, et sous les hautes instructions et le leadership de Sa Majesté le Roi, le Maroc a adopté plusieurs initiatives. "Dans le cadre d'une Stratégie nationale de l'immigration et l'asile, Sa Majesté le Roi a été le leader de l'Afrique dans son adoption de l'Agenda africain sur la migration en 2018. À Son éminente initiative, le Pacte mondial pour des migrations sûres, ordonnées et régulières en 2018 a été adopté par la communauté internationale. Sous Ses hautes directives, l'Observatoire africain pour les migrations a été créé à Rabat en 2020 et le Maroc a poursuivi la régularisation de la situation des immigrants, dont près de 50.000 d'entre eux ont vu leur situation régularisées", a rappelé le haut-commissaire.

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Lancement au Maroc de la campagne "1of8billion"

Le représentant du Fonds des Nations unies pour la population (UNFPA) au Maroc, Luis Mora, a annoncé, lors de cette rencontre-débat, le lancement au Maroc de la campagne de mobilisation "1of8billion", à l'occasion de la célébration de l'atteinte du seuil des 8 milliards par la population mondiale. Cette campagne se veut une occasion de lancer un appel pour une action conjointe visant à assurer que l'ensemble des 8 milliards de personnes puissent jouir de leurs pleins droits afin de créer un monde "plus juste, plus prospère et plus durable" et entend souligner l'importance des droits et aspirations de chaque personne dans la quête du développement mondial, a-t-il indiqué. Cette campagne, a ajouté le représentant de l'UNFPA, sera conduite en étroite collaboration avec les partenaires institutionnels à plusieurs niveaux territoriaux, les organisations de la société civile, le secteur privé, les centres de recherche et les universités au Maroc.

En 2050, un quart de la population marocaine sera composé de personnes âgées

Les personnes âgées (ayant 60 ans et plus) constitueront un quart de la population marocaine en 2050. "La baisse de la fécondité et l'allongement de l'espérance de vie entraîneront le vieillissement de la population marocaine. Le nombre de personnes âgées au Maroc va croître de façon soutenue. Le nombre de personnes âgées de 60 ans et plus augmentera de 3% pour atteindre 10 millions en 2050, alors que la population totale n'augmentera que de 0,6%", a ainsi précisé le directeur du Centre d'études et de recherches démographiques au HCP, Mohammed Fassi Fihri.

"Cette évolution s'accompagne de difficultés pour les caisses de retraite et les systèmes de santé qui devront faire face, en plus des maladies transmissibles qui caractérisent les pays en développement, aux maladies coûteuses et de longue durée de la vieillesse", a fait savoir M. Fassi Fihri, ajoutant que "sur le plan social, cette tendance peut être source de pauvreté et de vulnérabilité". Mais ce vieillissement de la population marocaine comporte un aspect positif, souligne le responsable, notant que cette tendance ouvre la voie à ce qu'on appelle le "deuxième dividende démographique", dans la mesure où l'augmentation de l'espérance de vie encourage les gens à épargner et à accumuler des actifs, ce qui peut contribuer à une augmentation durable du revenu national.
>> Lire aussi : La population mondiale a atteint 8 milliards d'habitants ce mardi

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Changement climatique : le Maroc aura des flux migratoire croissants

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Selon le HCP, le Maroc devra s'attendre à des flux migratoires croissants en provenance du sud du Sahara compte tenu des effets des changements climatiques qui accentuent les difficultés de l'Afrique en matière de croissance économique et du développement social.

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They will be the first climate refugees in south america

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They will be the first climate refugees in south america

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- In 30 years they will have to leave their current homes.
- The panama government is building 300 houses for the refugees, but for 30.000 people the future is still uncertain.

Question:
- How does the future of the natives of Guna Yala look like?

(Luca Ali)

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A panamai Guna Yala szigeteinek őslakos közössége lesz az egyik első Latin-Amerikában, amelynek el kell hagynia otthonát az éghajlatváltozás miatt.
A 365 szigetből álló Guna Yala az őslakosok területe. A Panama északnyugati részén található szigetek azonban 30 éven belül víz alá kerülhetnek. Mások szerint elképzelhető, hogy a szigetek egy része akár még az évszázad végén is a felszínen lehet.

A tengervíz, az erős hullámok mostanában szigetünk utcáit mossák. Ez egyre gyakrabban történik meg.
- mondja Magdalena Martínez, aki egész eddigi életét Gardi Sugdub szigetén töltötte

Az asszony szerint hamarosan el kell hagyniuk a szigetet, hogy a szárazföldre költözzenek. Gardi Sugdub lakói számára már készülnek is a házak, a panamai kormány szerint a 300 épület jövőre készülhet el, így néhányan a közeljövőben elhagyhatják süllyedő otthonukat. További 30 ezer szigetlakó számára azonban még ködbe burkolózik a jövő, elhelyezésükre egyelőre nincs forrás.

Az élet felénk nagyon békés. Természetes ételeket eszünk, és halat amit a tengerből fogunk ki. Nagyon szomorú lesz nekem és Guna Yala összes lakójának, ha a tenger elárasztja a szigeteket.
- teszi hozzá Martínez

Kapcsolódó bejegyzések

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Ők lesznek az első klímamenekültek Dél-Amerikában

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A panamai Guna Yala szigeteinek őslakos közössége lesz az egyik első Latin-Amerikában, amelynek el kell hagynia otthonát az éghajlatváltozás miatt. A 365 szigetből álló Guna Yala az őslakosok területe. A Panama északnyugati részén található szigetek azonban 30 éven belül víz alá kerülhetnek.

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Flooding of the Fiji Islands: How to resettle an entire country?

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Flooding of the Fiji Islands: How to resettle an entire country?

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no country has come as far as Fiji with regard to resettlement of entire villages affected by climate change (sea water rise, cyclones...) - governemental plan SOP: "Standard Operating Procedures for Planned Resettlement"

hereby, resettlement as a last resort after other policies (e.g. building of protective dams) do not suffice anymore

however, village resettlement is a complex and touchy issue

includes social, cultural and religious factors e.g. traumatic experience of leaving one's home, ancestors, graveyards

often takes long, sometimes live in provisional tents for more than 2 years

decisive factors for possibility of resettlement are availability of scarce resources of LAND, WOOD to rebuild, and MONEY:

land can be source of conflict (Tukuraki case)

not enough money (government and foreign support too little)

QUESTION: What are the decisive components to determine whether resettlement can happen (successfully) in the context of different villages in Fiji? In which cases has resettlement been (partially) successful and which not, and why?

POSSIBLE RESEARCH QUESTION: What constitute the potential complexities and hurdles of planned resettlement? How can the resettlement-plan be designed in a participatory and inclusive way to ensure that wishes of those affected are best integrated?

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Die Klimamigration hat begonnen - zumindest im Pazifik. Und die Aufgabe ist gewaltig. Auf den Fidschi-Inseln werden in den nächsten fünf bis zehn Jahren 42 Dörfer umsiedeln müssen, weil sie sonst unter Wasser stehen. Sechs Dörfer sind bereits umgezogen.

Fidschi liegt im Südpazifik, 1.800 Meilen östlich von Australien, hat mehr als 300 Inseln und eine Bevölkerung von knapp einer Million. Im Südwestpazifik steigen die Oberflächentemperaturen dreimal so schnell wie im globalen Durchschnitt. Schwere Wirbelstürme suchen die Region regelmäßig heim. Im Jahr 2016 traf der Zyklon Winston auf Fidschi, er tötete 44 Menschen und verursachte Schäden in Höhe von 1,4 Milliarden US-Dollar, das entspricht einem Drittel des Bruttoinlandsprodukts des Inselstaats. Seitdem trafen Fidschi sechs weitere Zyklone. Fünf der 15 Länder, die am stärksten durch wetterbedingte Ereignisse gefährdet sind, liegen im Pazifik. Fidschi liegt auf Platz 14.

Nun hat eine Arbeitsgruppe der Regierung den ersten tief greifenden Umsiedlungsplan vorgelegt: die „Standardarbeitsanweisungen für geplante Umsiedlungen", SOP. Denn die Umsiedlung eines Dorfes ist eine komplexe Aufgabe. „Wir versuchen immer wieder, dies zu erklären", sagte Satyendra Prasad, Fidschis Botschafter bei der UNO. „Es ist nicht damit getan, 30 oder 40 Häuser in einem Dorf abzureißen und sie weiter nach oben zu verlegen. Ich wünschte, es wäre so einfach." Schulen, Gesundheitszentren, Straßen, Strom, Wasser, Infrastruktur, die Dorfkirche: Sie alle müssen mit den Häusern umgesiedelt werden. „Und selbst wenn Sie das schaffen sollten, müssen Sie noch die Gräber der Menschen verlegen. Versuchen Sie das mal."

Kein anderes Land sei in der Planung so weit wie Fidschi, sagt Erica Bower, die als Expertin für Umsiedlungen mit der UNO und der fidschianischen Regierung zusammenarbeitet. „Das sind Fragen, die sich viele Regierungen auf der ganzen Welt in den nächsten zehn, 20, 50 Jahren stellen werden." Wie also siedelt man ein Land um?

1. Die erste Umsiedlung: Eine (Teil-)Erfolgsgeschichte

Vunidogoloa heißt das erste Dorf, das in Fidschi umgesiedelt wurde: ein Dorf mit etwa 140 Einwohnern auf Vanua Levu, der zweitgrößten Insel des Landes. 2014, zum Zeitpunkt des großen Umzugs, war der heute 62-jährige Sailosi Ramatu Dorfvorsteher. Hier wurde er geboren, hier, so, dachte er, würde er sterben. Jetzt ist sein altes Dorf eine Geisterstadt. Etwa 20 verlassene Häuser stehen noch, der Wind pfeift durch die offenen Türen und die zerbrochenen Jalousien. Die Dächer sind eingestürzt, die Dielen fehlen, alles ist überwuchert. Was einst eine grüne Lichtung war, auf der man sich zum Essen und Trinken traf, ist heute ein Sumpf.

Der Umzug war die letzte Option. Das Dorf hatte sich angepasst, bis es sich nicht mehr anpassen konnte. Unten am Sandstrand des alten Dorfes zeigt mir Ramatu Betonblöcke, die aus dem Sand ragen: die Fundamente seines alten Hauses. Als das Wasser immer weiter vorrückte, hatte seine Familie das Haus erst nach hinten, dann wieder nach vorne verlegt. Er zeigt auf die Überreste einer Mauer, wenige Meter vor der Küste. Es war die zweite, die für das Dorf gebaut wurde, nachdem Wellen und Stürme die erste zerstört hatten. Auch sie war unbrauchbar geworden.

Besonders schmerzhaft war es, die Toten zurückzulassen. „Unsere Großeltern, unsere Eltern, wir ließen alles zurück. Als wir an diesem Tag umzogen, war es, als würden wir als Fremde in ein fremdes Land ziehen. Die Leute packten ihre Koffer, sie wurden auf einen Lastwagen verladen. Sie weinten, bevor sie ihr Haus verließen, denn das war das letzte Mal."

Das neue Vunidogoloa besteht aus 30 blassgrünen Häusern, verteilt über einen tiefgrünen Hügel. Im Haus von Sera Naidrua sind die Wände mit bunten Stoffbahnen ausgekleidet, durch die offenen Fenster und Türen weht eine kühle Brise. Naidrua, 74 Jahre alt, schenkt kalten Tee in Plastikbecher und erinnert sich daran, wie sie als Kind die Früchte des Dilo-Baums an der Küste des alten Dorfs pflückte, zum Murmelspielen. Aber, erzählt Naidrua, „wir hatten wegen der Wirbelstürme und der Überflutung des Dorfes durch die Wellen Angst um unser Leben. Hier fühlen wir uns sicherer".

Für eine Umsiedlung braucht eine Gemeinde vor allem zwei Dinge: Land und Holz. Zumindest in dieser Hinsicht hatte Vunidogoloa Glück. Die Dorfbewohner besaßen bereits Land innerhalb der Clan-Grenze, und auch Wald, der Holz für die Häuser liefern konnte. Während die fidschianische Regierung einen großen Teil der Umsiedlung finanzierte und die Internationale Arbeitsorganisation einen Teil der Mittel für die Bezahlung der Bauarbeiter bereitstellte, steuerte das Dorf einen Großteil des Materials bei.

Dennoch wurden auch Fehler gemacht. „Einer der auffälligsten Punkte ist, dass man vergessen hat, Küchen einzubauen", sagte Makereta Waqavonovono von Climate Tok, einer Organisation, die mit ländlichen Gemeinden Aufklärungsarbeit zur Klimakrise leistet. Der ursprüngliche Plan der Regierung sah eine Außenküche für jedes Haus vor, die in einer zweiten Bauphase errichtet werden sollte, was jedoch nie geschah. Schließlich bauten die Dorfbewohner ihre eigenen Küchen. Fehlten hier schlicht die Mittel? Makereta Waqavonovono erklärt es sich anders: „Es bedeutet, dass Frauen nicht beteiligt waren."

Dafür verfügen die neuen Häuser über Klärgruben, Solarzellen und Toiletten mit Wasserspülung. Der Anbau von Lebensmitteln ist hier viel einfacher, da der Boden nicht sumpfig und versalzen ist. Der neue Standort Vunidogoloas liegt in der Nähe einer Straße, die eine bessere Anbindung an größere Städte ermöglicht, um medizinische Versorgung und Schulbildung zu erhalten. Aber das leichtere Reisen hat auch dazu geführt, dass Alkohol in dem zuvor trockenen Dorf Einzug hielt, was Simione Botu, der derzeitige Dorfvorsteher, als „kriminelles Verhalten" bezeichnet. Außerdem liegt der neue Standort im Landesinneren, was den Fischfang erschwert. Viele Bewohner, so Naidrua, gehen zum Fischen noch zwei- oder dreimal pro Woche zum alten Dorf hinunter.

2. Ein Plan muss her

Wenn das Land „iTaukei" ist, also in indigenem Besitz, geht der Antrag auf Umsiedlung an den Bezirksbeirat; ist das Land nicht in indigenem Besitz, geht der Antrag an das Ministerium für Wohnungsbau und kommunale Entwicklung; wenn die Gemeinde als erdbeben- oder erdrutschgefährdet eingestuft wird, sollte die Risikobewertung des Landes von der Abteilung für Bodenschätze durchgeführt werden; handelt es sich um das Risiko von Wirbelstürmen, wird dies vom Meteorologischen Amt der Fidschi-Inseln vorgenommen. Der komplexe nationale Umsiedlungsplan in Fidschi besteht aus zahlreichen Diagrammen, die die erforderlichen Schritte für eine Umsiedlung aufzeigen - je nach Ausgangslage. Dabei wird der SOP ständig angepasst, seine Verfasser bezeichnen ihn als „lebendes Dokument".

„Außenstehende können leicht sagen, dass in jede Entscheidung eine Frau mit einbezogen werden sollte", sagte Christine Fung von der GIZ. „Und dann läuft der Prozess, die Frauen sagen in den Sitzungen ‚Ja', aber wenn man genauer nachhakt, ist das manchmal nicht wirklich die Stimme der Frauen: Kulturell bedingt überlassen die meisten Frauen den Männern das Wort." Man habe dann versucht, Frauen gezielt und separat zu einer möglichen Umsiedlung zu konsultieren. Nun müssen nicht nur 90 Prozent aller Dorfbewohner, sondern auch 90 Prozent der Frauen, 90 Prozent der Männer, 90 Prozent der Älteren, 90 Prozent der Jüngeren, 90 Prozent der LGBTQ-Bewohner und 90 Prozent der Menschen mit Behinderung ihre Zustimmung geben, bevor Gespräche mit der Regierung über eine Umsiedlung beginnen können. Bisher hing die Entscheidung darüber, ob ein Dorf für eine Umsiedlung infrage kam - und der letztendliche Erfolg einer Umsiedlung - in hohem Maße vom Einfluss der Dorfvorsteher ab.

Aber selbst wenn sich alle inklusive der Behörden einig sind, dass eine Umsiedlung unumgänglich ist, braucht es noch Geld - und Land.

3. Ein Dorf in der Schwebe: Umzugsbereit - aber wohin?

Für die Einwohner von Nabavatu war das Problem das Land. Bis zum letzten Jahr hatte dort niemand eine Umsiedlung in Betracht gezogen. Das Dorf, das auf einem Hügel auf der Insel Vanua Levu mit Blick auf den mächtigen Dreketi-Fluss liegt, hatte den schleichenden Anstieg des Meeresspiegels und die allmähliche Vergiftung des Bodens noch nicht erlebt. Dann, im Januar 2021, wurde es vom Zyklon Ana getroffen. „Es war mein erster Zyklon", sagt Eseroma Lava, 66, der stellvertretende Dorfvorsteher. „Ich hatte an diesem Tag wirklich Angst."

Achtzehn Monate nach dem Wirbelsturm war das alte Dorf immer noch ein Schauplatz der Zerstörung. Das Gemeindehaus war völlig kaputt, die Decke eingestürzt, die Kirche mit tiefen Rissen vom Fundament bis zum Dach. Die Vermessungsingenieure der Regierung erklärten den Boden für zu instabil. Die Bewohner mussten das Dorf verlassen, für immer.

Die fast 400 Menschen leben seit über einem Jahr in Katastrophenzelten auf dem Gelände einer Kirche. Kleine Solarbatterien sorgen für Strom - solange die Sonne scheint. Um nach Einbruch der Dunkelheit weiter zu lesen oder Schularbeiten zu erledigen, nutzen die Kinder die Taschenlampen ihrer Telefone, sofern sie welche haben. Die Wasserversorgung ist lückenhaft, und es gibt nicht genügend Toiletten. „Alle 38 Zelte hier benutzen die Kirchentoilette - drei für die Frauen, drei für die Männer", sagt Lava seufzend.

Die Sonne geht unter, und Lavas Tochter Laisana Bilosiliva badet ihr Kind in der Betonspüle der behelfsmäßigen Küche vor ihrem Zelt, in dem sieben Erwachsene und sechs Kinder leben. Die Privatsphäre ist ein Problem, aber die größte Herausforderung sei die Hitze, so Bilosiliva. Tagsüber ist es in den Zelten zu heiß für die Kinder, deshalb verbringt sie einen Großteil des Tages mit ihrer Tochter draußen im Schatten eines Mangobaums. Nachts ist es in den Zelten jedoch eiskalt.

Dass Nabavatu umgesiedelt werden muss, bestritt niemand. Das Problem war, dass es innerhalb seiner Clangrenzen kein geeignetes Land gab. Doch nach anderthalb Jahre erzielten das Dorf und die Regierung eine Einigung über ein fünf Hektar großes staatliches Grundstück in der Nähe. „Nabavatu-Umsiedlung, gesponsert von der fidschianischen Regierung in Absprache mit dem Nabavatu Trust. Ein Projekt zum Klimawandel", steht auf einem Schild.

Das Land ist nun sicher. Doch die Abholzung für die neuen Häuser hat noch nicht begonnen. Und sie wird etwa 18 Monate dauern.

4. Die „Tukuraki-Erfahrung": Wie es schiefgehen kann

Die Frage nach Land stellt sich für jedes der 42 Dörfer auf der Liste der dringlichen Umsiedlung. Indigenes Land kann in Fidschi weder gekauft noch verkauft werden, aber ein Clan kann mit einem anderen eine Vereinbarung treffen, die ihm erlaubt, ein Stück Land für ein neues Dorf zu nutzen. „Es wird kein Geld erwartet", sagt eine am Umsiedlungsprozess Beteiligte, die anonym bleiben möchte. „In unserer Kultur ist das nicht etwas, das wir - das wäre ..." Sie beginnt über die Absurdität zu lachen. „Man gibt es einer Familie oder einem Dorf, damit sie es bewohnen, weil sie in Not sind. Es wird sogar als Ansporn gesehen, dass man das tut, um die Beziehungen zu den benachbarten Clans zu stärken."

Aber das Fehlen einer finanziellen Vereinbarung kann die Dinge manchmal komplizierter machen. 2017 wurde Tukuraki, ein Dorf im Hochland der Hauptinsel Viti Levu, nach einer Reihe von Katastrophen auf das Land eines benachbarten Clans umgesiedelt. Fünf Jahre zuvor erlebte Tukuraki einen Erdrutsch, eine Familie kam dabei ums Leben. Später im selben Jahr traf der Zyklon Evan das Dorf, beschädigte die provisorischen Häuser, zerstörte die Infrastruktur und vernichtete die Ernte. Im Februar 2016 dann kam Zyklon Winston, der schlimmste in der Geschichte Fidschis. Die Dorfbewohner mussten in Höhlen Zuflucht suchen - ein neues Dorf wurde aufgebaut.

Doch es kam zu Konflikten zwischen den umgesiedelten Bewohnern von Tukuraki und Mitgliedern des Clans, auf dessen Land sie nun leben. Letztere waren unzufrieden, als sie feststellten, dass die Häuser, die für das neue Dorf gebaut worden waren - mit Küchen, Toiletten und Bädern -, besser waren als die ihren und dass ein Fischteich, ein Geflügelstall und Bienenstöcke gebaut worden waren, damit die neuen Einwohner ein Einkommen erzielen konnten.

Die „Tukuraki-Erfahrung" hat zu einem neuen Passus im nationalen Umsiedlungsplan geführt: Die Entwicklung der Gastgemeinde muss mitberücksichtigt werden, wenn eine neue Gemeinde diese Entwicklung erhält.

5. Und wer bezahlt's?

Ist die Landfrage geklärt, bleibt die der Finanzierung. Der Prozess ist teuer, und weder die fidschianische Regierung noch die umzusiedelnden Dörfer haben das Geld, um die Rechnung zu bezahlen. Das BIP der Fidschi-Inseln lag 2021 bei 4,59 Milliarden Dollar, ein Rückgang von fast 20 Prozent gegenüber 2019, nachdem Covid die Tourismusindustrie über Nacht zum Erliegen gebracht hatte.

Die internationalen Gelder reichen nicht aus. „Wenn man sich die Höhe der Mittel ansieht, die für die Anpassung an den Klimawandel zur Verfügung gestellt werden", so Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum, Minister für Klimawandel auf den Fidschi-Inseln, „dann ist die Zuweisung für den Pazifik nur ein Bruchteil eines Bruchteils davon".

2019 richtete Fidschi den weltweit ersten Treuhandfonds für Umsiedlung ein. Die Anschubfinanzierung stammt aus der staatlichen Klimaanpassungsabgabe, aus Tourismus-Steuern sowie aus Steuern auf hohe Einkommen über 117.000 US-Dollar. Im Februar 2020 spendete Neuseeland als erster internationaler Partner direkt in den Treuhandfonds und steuerte 1,25 Mio. US-Dollar bei. Das Geld im Staatstopf reicht jedoch längst nicht für die Umsiedlung aller betroffenen Gemeinden.

6. Gehen oder bleiben?

Wenn ein Dorf umgesiedelt werden soll, kommen also Berater, Vermessungsingenieure, Regierungsbeamte, Geldgeber - und es kommen: Theologen. „Die Menschen im Pazifik sind immer noch zutiefst spirituell und tief mit dem Land verbunden", sagt Netani Rika von der Pazifischen Kirchenkonferenz (PCC), die Kirchen verschiedener christlicher Konfessionen im gesamten Pazifik verbindet. „Es ist das Land, das Gott euren Vorvätern gegeben hat und das eure Vorväter euch gegeben haben, und wenn ihr jetzt wegzieht, ist das fast ein Zeichen, dass ihr euch eurer Verantwortung entzieht. Manchmal reicht es aus, wenn der Priester, der Pfarrer oder der Pastor sagt: Seht her, ob ihr nun hier seid oder oben auf dem Berg, Gott ist immer noch bei euch. Gott ist überall. Gott war von Anfang an bei dir und wird dich auch auf dieser Reise begleiten. Fühlt euch frei, zu gehen."

Für viele Pazifikbewohner sind die Grabstätten nach wie vor das größte Hindernis bei der Umsiedlung. Dorfbewohner stehen vor der Wahl, entweder die Gebeine ihrer Vorfahren zurückzulassen oder sie zu exhumieren und an den neuen Ort zu bringen. Beide Entscheidungen sind zutiefst traumatisch.

In einer winzigen Siedlung mit einem halben Dutzend Häusern namens Togoru steht der Friedhof bereits unter Wasser. Bei Flut schwimmen Fische um die Grabsteine der Vorfahren von Lavenia McGoon, aber die 70-Jährige will bleiben. Als ich zu Besuch komme, hat McGoon Besuch aus Australien. Ein Boot voller Kinder bricht gerade zu einem Ausflug auf, ein Kleinkind schläft in einer Hängematte zwischen Palmen. „Es ist herrlich, das werden Sie merken. Es ist so schön, so friedlich", sagte sie. „Ich lebe hier mit meinen Enkelkindern. Mein Mann ist 2013 verstorben. Mir geht es gut, ich bin glücklich. Wenn ich Fisch essen will, stelle ich mich einfach hierhin, werfe meine Angel aus und fange meinen Fisch. Wir verkaufen Kokosnüsse und andere Dinge, und das ist genug."

Die Szene ist idyllisch - bis man zum Ufer kommt, etwa 30 Meter von der Stelle entfernt, an der die Straße am Eingang der Siedlung endet. Hier führt McGoon einen verzweifelten Eine-Frau-Krieg gegen das Meer. Sie hat den Strand mit alten, mit Steinen gefüllten Autoreifen bestückt, damit die Wellen bei Flut nicht mit solcher Wucht auf das Land prallen.

Togoru verliert jedes Jahr 1,5 Meter an Land. Aber in den ersten sechs Monaten des Jahres 2022, so McGoon, habe man bereits fünf Meter verloren. Nicht nur wegen der Erderwärmung. Auch die Aufstauung eines nahe gelegenen Flusses für den Reisanbau in der Region habe eine Rolle gespielt. „Wenn man gegen die Natur vorgeht, wird genau das passieren. Und wenn der Ozean erst einmal wütend wird, war's das."

Togoru ist nicht für eine Verlegung vorgesehen - es steht nicht auf der Liste der 42 Orte. Die Regierung hat die Gemeinde wiederholt auf die Möglichkeit einer Umsiedlung angesprochen, aber die Bewohner haben betont, dass sie nicht umziehen wollen.

Die Regierung hat McGoon einen weiteren Schutzwall versprochen, nachdem der erste von den Wellen zerstört worden war. Sie will bleiben, bis sie stirbt. „Ich bin zu alt, um noch einmal von vorne anzufangen." Wenn sie nicht mehr da ist, sieht sie keine Zukunft für Togoru. „Ich sage meinen Enkeln: Versucht, es besser zu machen. Geht zur Schule, erreicht eure Ziele, arbeitet, verdient Geld und haut ab nach Übersee, das ist alles. Denn, wissen Sie, wir sehen schon, was wirklich los ist."

Kate Lyons berichtet als Redakteurin des Guardian in Australien über den Pazifikraum

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Überflutungen der Fidschi-Inseln: Wie zieht man ein ganzes Land um?

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Die Klimamigration hat begonnen - zumindest im Pazifik. Und die Aufgabe ist gewaltig. Auf den Fidschi-Inseln werden in den nächsten fünf bis zehn Jahren 42 Dörfer umsiedeln müssen, weil sie sonst unter Wasser stehen. Sechs Dörfer sind bereits umgezogen. Fidschi liegt im Südpazifik, 1.800 Meilen östlich von Australien, hat mehr als 300 Inseln und eine Bevölkerung von knapp einer Million.

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The Manila Times - Millions at risk of climate displacement in Middle East

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The Manila Times - Millions at risk of climate displacement in Middle East

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In countries of the Middle East millions of people could be displaced through climate change

The main reasons for climate-induced migration in the Middle East are decreased agricultural production and rising sea water levels

Climate change decreases precipitation and availability of freshwater and increases dependencies on water imports

Disputes over natural resources can cause violent conflicts

The international community should provide financial support for climate adaptation in the Global South

Questions

How will climate change affect agricultural production and water scarcity in the Middle East?

What are the main reasons for climate-induced migration in countries in the Middle East?

Why is the Middle East particularly affected by climate change impacts and climate migration?

(Hannah K.)

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Refugee's bid for protected status due to climate crisis in Kiribati rejected

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Refugee's bid for protected status due to climate crisis in Kiribati rejected

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A Refugee from Kiribati bid for protected status in New Zealand (NZ) due to the climate crisis.

The bid was rejected by an NZ court, despite a UN ruling saying it is unlawful to return people to countries where their lives might be threatened by the climate crisis.

The NZ tribunal found the man did not meet the threshold to receive protected refugee status due to climate change, because, although there is some erosion, there is no concrete evidence that "his land has been eroded to a point of no utility".

Main Questions:

What are the conditions a person affected by climate change has to meet to apply for refugee status?

Have there been precedent cases in the past?

What were the reasons for the NZ court to decide the man is not eligible for refugee status protection?

Possible Research Question:

To what extent are the rights of climate refugees covered by the current UN Human Rights framework? Should there be an amendment to the provision in order to cover a more comprehensive understanding of Human Rights? What are the different positions in academic literature?

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By Jeremy Wilkinson, Open Justice multimedia journalist of

A refugee has failed in a bid to receive protected status in New Zealand on the basis his island home is becoming uninhabitable, despite a United Nations ruling saying it's unlawful to return people to countries where their lives might be threatened by the climate crisis.

While the man won't specifically be deported back to Kiribati, he hasn't been granted protected refugee status, which would prevent that eventuality.

The man has lived in New Zealand since 2008 after emigrating here with his family from Christmas Island.

However, he became liable for deportation after being charged with violent offending against another Kiribati national in 2010.

He appealed a deportation notice served to him in 2013, but has managed to stay in the country since then through appealing that deportation notice.

Now, in a decision released by the Immigration Protection Tribunal, he has unsuccessfully tried to argue that returning home to Kiribati would put him at risk of retribution from his victim's family and make life incredibly difficult due to rising sea levels and erosion on the island.

A landmark ruling was released by the United Nations Human Rights Committee in 2020 regarding another Kiribati native, Ioane Teitiota, who also pleaded to stay in New Zealand on the basis that his home island's population had exploded to 50,000 from 2000 in 60 years.

Rising sea levels meant the now-overcrowded island's inhabitants were forced to live in closer proximity to each other, which had led to violence and social tensions.

Teitiota argued that Kiribati was projected to become virtually uninhabitable in the next 15 years.

Ultimately, the courts in New Zealand found that his personal circumstances were not severe enough to warrant protected status, and the UN committee agreed.

However, it did acknowledge that cases like Teitiota's would become more frequent in the future and that governments had a responsibility not to return people to countries where their lives would be at risk due to climate change.

The committee's judgement was not legally binding, but highlighted the obligations that countries have under international law.

Last week, the Immigration Protection Tribunal found that, although the negative effects of climate change were getting worse in Kiribati, there were measures in place by the Government to stall and minimise their impact.

"While the tribunal accepts the appellant's evidence that, at the time he left Kiribati in 2008, his land was already suffering from erosion and he genuinely fears that he will now be unable to use it to sustain himself, there is no direct evidence to establish that his land has been eroded to a point of no utility," it said in the decision.

"There is no sufficient evidential basis for the tribunal to infer that, even if land physically remains, it has passed the point of habitability or is nearing that threshold."

The tribunal went on to say that multiple climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction projects and programmes have been, and are being, developed and implemented on the island.

However, their progress has been slow, and they've experienced financing and implementation problems.

They also noted that the man's village was only classed as being of "medium risk", despite also saying that: "There is no question that Kiribati is impacted by the adverse effects of climate change".

The climate change issues identified near the man's village were coastal erosion, depletion of fish stocks, overcrowding, lack of water, and poor-quality water.

"However, there is evidence that at present, climate change is not the main cause of coastal erosion, water shortages or overcrowding," the tribunal said.

"Other issues, especially population growth and the move to Western lifestyles, are having a more immediate impact."

The tribunal found the man did not meet the threshold to receive protected refugee status due to climate change, nor for his claims that he may face retribution from his victim's family.

* This story first appeared in The New Zealand Herald

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Refugee's bid for protected status due to climate crisis in Kiribati rejected

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A refugee has failed in a bid to receive protected status in New Zealand on the basis his island home is becoming uninhabitable, despite a United Nations ruling saying it's unlawful to return people to countries where their lives might be threatened by...

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Climate change threat – Fiji, moving villages inundated by rising seas, wants big emitters to pay

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Climate change threat – Fiji, moving villages inundated by rising seas, wants big emitters to pay

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Many coastal villages in Fiji must make difficult decisions about their future and seek government support for expensive adaptation or resettlement projects. Resettlement is highly debated and sometimes resisted in communities.

The Fijian government urges industrialized countries to pay for loss and damages, particularly providing funds for resettlement projects.

Current international development funds only cover measures for dealing with rising sea levels (e.g. dams, planting mangroves), but do not provide enough to finance large-scale resettlement.

Fiji is the first Pacific island nation that relocated a community due to rising sea levels in 2014. A further 795 communities will need to move as climate change progresses.

Main Questions:

What are the current challenges Fijian communities face due to climate change and how do they respond to these challenges?

What are the problems of rising sea levels to local communities?

How is the problem of rising sea levels addressed in international politics?

What does the Fijian government demand from developed countries?

Possible Research Question:

How are different adaptation strategies negotiated in Fijian communities? What are the influencing factors for communities to choose one option over the other?

Are (current) loss and damage provisions from industrial countries from an environmental justice perspective enough in consideration of their historical responsibility for climate change?

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Serua, Fiji - Boats moor next to living rooms on Fiji's Serua Island, where water breaches the seawall at high tide, flooding into the village.

Planks of wood stretch between some homes, forming a makeshift walkway as saltwater inundates gardens.

Village elders always believed they would die here on prized land where their chiefs are buried. But as the community runs out of ways to adapt to the rising Pacific Ocean, the 80 villagers face the painful decision whether to move.

Semisi Madanawa, raising three children who wade through playgrounds, says that given the flooding, erosion and exposure to extreme weather, the village may have to relocate to Fiji's main island to secure a future for the next generation.

Village elders are resisting, wondering if land reclamation might stop the sea from taking Serua Island's homes and ancestral burial sites, he says.

"It takes time for an idea to settle in the hearts of us human beings so we can accept the changes that are coming," says Mr Madanawa, 38.

"Climate change is happening and we need to make a decision."

Serua Island is one of many coastal villages making difficult decisions about their future, seeking government assistance for expensive projects to adapt or move, say Fiji government officials.

Leaders of 15 low-lying Pacific island nations declared climate change their "single greatest existential threat" at a mid-July summit in Fiji's capital, Suva.

Facing some of the most direct effects of climate change, they want developed nations, who contributed the most to global warming, not only to curb their emissions but to pay for the steps that islanders must take to protect their people from rising sea levels.

The push has become a key battle at United Nations climate conferences. Building seawalls, planting mangroves and improving drainage are no longer enough to save villages in many cases, says Shivanal Kumar, a climate-change adaptation specialist in Fiji's economy ministry.

"A lot of communities are in genuine crisis, they've been trying to survive," he says.

"The impacts of climate change have been felt for many years and there came a time where they gave up and said it's now time to move."

Relocation aims to preserve human rights by protecting people from rising seas, bigger storm surges and more extreme cyclones, Mr Kumar says.

But the funds pledged by developed nations at UN climate conferences do not cover relocation, only adaptation, such as building a seawall, officials say.

At last year's global climate conference, called COP26, developed nations agreed only to keep talking about compensation for the unavoidable impacts of climate change, including migration, suffered by vulnerable societies.

The Pacific leaders at their summit called for developed nations to show meaningful progress at COP27 on a new goal - swift funding for such "loss and damage".

The president of COP26, British politician Alok Sharma, said in Suva last month he understood the disappointment of Pacific villagers on the front line of climate change.

"You are forced to deal with the consequences of greenhouse gas emissions generated largely by the biggest emitting countries, who are a long way from here. This is not a crisis of your making," he said in a speech.

"We are going to have to find a way of having a substantive discussion on loss and damage at COP27."

Fiji, an archipelago of hundreds of islands some 2000km (1200 miles) north of New Zealand, in 2014 became the first Pacific island nation to relocate a community because of rising sea levels. Six villages have moved or plan to with government support, but a new process to prioritise the most urgent relocations is still under development.

A further 795 will need to move, says climate youth activist Salote Nasalo, who says she loses sleep thinking about where they can go.

Pacific youth will continue protesting against inaction on financing by the big emitters, says Ms Nasolo, a University of South Pacific student.

The first community to relocate was Vunidogoloa, after villagers invited officials to see how they lived with water up to their knees.

Saltwater had destroyed the ability of the 150 residents to grow crops, taking away livelihoods and food security, says former village headman Sailosi Ramatu.

In the new village 1.5km (1 mile) inland on Vanua Levu Island, children now sit outside their homes, dry feet planted firmly on the ground.

Mr Ramatu, 63, says it took time to persuade the elders to move, but the village came together and listened to experts.

"We can also make a decision in the world if the leaders come together," he says.

"They should help us, they should pay for our loss and damage."

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Climate change threat - Fiji, moving villages inundated by rising seas, wants big emitters to pay

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Serua, Fiji - Boats moor next to living rooms on Fiji's Serua Island, where water breaches the seawall at high tide, flooding into the village. Planks of wood stretch between some homes, forming a makeshift walkway as saltwater inundates gardens. Village elders always believed they would die here on prized land where their chiefs are buried.

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The Diplomat: For Climate Migrants, Bangladesh Offers Promising Alternatives

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The Diplomat: For Climate Migrants, Bangladesh Offers Promising Alternatives

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The city Mongla in Bangladesh offers a new home for climate migrants from low-lying areas in Bangladesh

The city is presented as a success story due to climate-resilient infrastructure and economic opportunities

Bangladesh plans to build more satellite towns for climate refugees to provide alternatives to moving to big cities

According to the World Bank, there will be more than 19 million climate refugees in Bangladesh by 2050

Questions

How does Bangladesh address the issue of climate migration?

Which measures are implemented in the city for climate adaptation?

How does Mongla provide economic opportunities for climate migrants?

(Hannah K.)

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The Guardian - migrant-friendly town planning in Bangladesh

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The Guardian - migrant-friendly town planning in Bangladesh

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Pranandita

Ideas

-        Bangladesh one of the worst affected countries due to climate change – worsening seasonal floods, increasing severity of cyclones, erratic monsoons (on which they depend for agriculture)

-        Climate change increases internal migration – projected to have 19.9 million internal climate refugees by 2050, nearly half the predicted number for all of South Asia (World Bank)

-        Plan to alleviate pressure on overpopulated centres of immigration with poor living conditions (such as the capital Dhaka) by developing multiple ‘satellite towns’ near economic hubs as migrant-friendly towns

-        The port city of Mongla first to be implemented – already underwent infrastructural development to mitigate climate risks

-        Migrants employed in the port and export processing zone

-        City actively plans to attract and integrate climate migrants, including measures for reducing host-migrant conflicts

Questions

-        What are the impacts of climate change on internal migration in Bangladesh?

-        How can countries such as Bangladesh channel internal migration to alleviate pressure on immigration hotspots such as large overpopulated cities with poor living conditions?

-        What infrastructural capacities can climate-vulnerable cities build for climate resilience?

-        What are some plans adopted for providing employment to migrants and ensuring their social and cultural integration?

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2022/jan/24/port-in-a-storm-the-trailblazing-town-welcoming-climate-refugees-in-bangladesh

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Boats and boating--Equipment and supplies

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People's Archive of Rural India - climate change in a coastal town 

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People's Archive of Rural India - climate change in a coastal town 

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Pranandita

Ideas

-        Slow coastal erosion in a town off the eastern coast of India documented for over 100 years has recently become more than 20 times faster in recent years, possibly due to climate change and associated extreme climate events such as cyclones.

-        Gradually receding coastline leads to slow displacement and very small-scale migration within the same town, very different from our typical view of migration as being something dramatic and long-distance.

-        Families are forced to rebuild their houses again and again at great financial expense.

-        Spatial reorganization of families has caused changes in the sociocultural makeup: for example, wealth upper-caste families were able to relocate inland while lower-caste families were forced to remain near the coast. This led to a weakening of oppressive caste traditions in the communities near the coast and increasing conversion to Christianity by lower-caste groups to escape caste-based humiliation and exploitation.

Questions

-        How have recent climate events exacerbated environmental pressures on coastal communities?

-        How does climate change lead to local, small-scale migration?

-        What measures have communities and governments employed to mitigate coastal erosion? Are they effective?

-        How does climate change-related small-scale migration change traditional sociocultural norms?

https://ruralindiaonline.org/en/articles/oh-that-house-thats-in-the-sea-now-there/

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The Guardian: Port in a storm: the trailblazing town welcoming climate refugees in Bangladesh

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The Guardian: Port in a storm: the trailblazing town welcoming climate refugees in Bangladesh

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-climate crisis is fostering the migration from rural to urban areas (especially to the capital Dhaka)
-about 20 million internal refugees by 2050
-vision of "transformative adaptation": identification of cities that can take migrant in, offer jobs, and are resilient, for instance, because of protective infrastructure  (so called economic hubs)
-"soft interventions" to integrate families into new home

Questions answered:
-What consequences is Bangladesh facing because of the climate crisis?
-How does the country try to relocate people from endangered areas?
-What is "transformative adaptation" and what role do economic hubs play in environmental migration?

(Lisa)

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Boats and boating--Equipment and supplies

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Devastating rains fuel major climate migrant crisis in southern Pakistan.

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Devastating rains fuel major climate migrant crisis in southern Pakistan.

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URL: https://arab.news/byjj6

Hundreds of thousands of people in Pakistan are forced to migrate every year because of rapidly changing weather patterns.

Experts call for a national rehabilitation plan as Pakistan is expected to have around 2 million climate migrants by 2050.

Pakistan officials blamed other countries for the irresponsible environmental practices due to climate change.

One of the climate migrant, Ameer Ali changed the place of residence 4 times due to cyclones, floods and harsh rains. Because of unstable climate, his family couldn’t earn and pay the rent.

-What are the consequences of climate

migration?

•Big cities suffer from a large influx of migrants with already poor planning and infrastructure. Climate crisis and migration effects social and economic dynamics and increased inequality

Many experts talk about the need for a rehabilitation plan to deal with migration caused by climate change.

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La Nación (Argentina): Moving to escape natural disasters: the alarming number of climate migrants in the world and what's happening in Latin America

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La Nación (Argentina): Moving to escape natural disasters: the alarming number of climate migrants in the world and what's happening in Latin America

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-more and more people have to move because of climate change
-new policies to address environmental migration (e.g., regarding replacement, mitigation)
-most of environmental migration happens within countries (vs. cross-border migration)
-migration from rural to urban areas
-most vulnerable groups: women, children, and elderly people
-interconnection of climate crisis, economic and political issues
-implementation of a program in some Latin American countries to provide humanitarian visa for people affected by social-environmental disasters
-importance of pan-national policy measures

Questions answered:
-Where are people most affected by displacements due to climate disasters/crisis?
-What policy measures are already implemented to protect environmental migrants?

Possible research question:
-How does environmental migration and displacement affect urban areas (e.g., because of a dense population, more resource use)?

(Lisa)

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Canada doesn’t appear to have a plan to welcome climate migrants

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Canada doesn’t appear to have a plan to welcome climate migrants

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The Canadian government does not have a specified plan for how to deal with the expected rise in climate change-related migration

Distinction is made between fast-onset migration (after immediate desasters) and slow-onset migration (after long-term gradual environmental degradation). Especially the latter is often disregarded in policy-making in Western countries

Effects of climate change is global, vulnerability of populations is mainly constituted by local socio-economic conditions

The legal term "refugee" is unfit for contemporary times, since it historically developed as protection against political and racial oppression, thus often not being applicable to people migrating for climate change-related reasons

The appropriate policy mix for countries like Canada ought to contain granting right of residence for affected people, paying in loss-and-damage fund and rapid decarbonisation

QUESTION ADDRESSED: What do Canadian policy-makers do in relation to climate change-related migration? What ought they to do?

POSSIBLE RESEARCH QUESTION: What changes to legal terms are necessary in countries like Canada for allowing just treatment of people migrating for climate change-related reasons?

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Canada doesn't appear to have a plan to welcome climate migrants | Ricochet

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Growing up in Ghana, Jamima Baada watched her community, including members of her own family, migrate from one region to another less impacted by climate change. Now she teaches climate change and human migration at the University of British Columbia.

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Pacific climate migration muddied by legal confusion

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Pacific climate migration muddied by legal confusion

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- People in the Pacific Islands often consider group rights as more important than individual rights. Thus, it is hard to establish a right to environmental migration based on an individualist human rights approach.
- It is necessary to establish regional plans for environmental migration which account for different legal traditions of “old traditional law overlaid by modern national law”.

QUESTIONS

- Which problems exist concerning environmental migration across Pacific Islands?
- How can regional migration for Pacific Islanders be dealt with?

(Nino)

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COP27: Antigua's PM asks 'Why should we live somewhere else?' as he says his people don't want to become climate refugees

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COP27: Antigua's PM asks 'Why should we live somewhere else?' as he says his people don't want to become climate refugees

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At the COP27 summit, the topic of climate refugees from small island states is present, with the delegations of some small island states openly considering relocation

However, the PM of Antigua and Barbuda - a country not only facing the risk of sea level rise, but also severe drought - reports that people from the state are unwilling to relocate and abandoning the place where they lived for generations

Instead, the delegation, together with other small island states, aims to push for more ambitious and binding climate action, as well as compensation funds

QUESTION ADDRESSED: What is the perspective of people affected by catastrophic implications of climate change (and their respective governments) on relocation as a consequence of chanes to the environment they live in?

POSSIBLE RESEARCH QUESTION(s): What role does the possibility of relocation of climate change-affected people play for international climate negotiations? What role should it play?

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The leader of Antigua and Barbuda has said he will not allow his people to become climate refugees, in an indignant rebuff to the idea some citizens might have to relocate as climate breakdown bites.

"Why should we, [live somewhere else]?" Gaston Browne told Sky News during the COP27 climate summit in Egypt.

The Caribbean leader added: "That is our civilisation. That is where we have lived for hundreds of years."

Last week, the climate envoy of the Marshall Islands, a sprawling chain of volcanic islands and coral atolls in the central Pacific Ocean, averaging just 1.8 metres above sea level, told Sky News they were already considering relocation.

Commonwealth nation Antigua and Barbuda is also low-lying, but its prime minister said drought was hitting hard.

The country must now generate all its drinking water via energy-intensive reverse osmosis, making agriculture unviable and forcing it to import 90% of its food.

"We will certainly not consider any option of relocation. We do not expect to become climate refugees in anyone's country," he said.

The prime minister vowed to fight "unrelentingly for global emissions to be reduced", to preserve the country's environment and "civilisation".

In an interview during his visit to Sharm el-Sheikh, Mr Browne also warned that multilateral climate action is failing to protect the planet with anything like the urgency needed.

The annual United Nations COP climate talks have made "incremental gains", he said.

"But the urgency that is needed to protect the planet - climate diplomacy has failed in that regard. And that is why other options must be pursued," he added.

He and other small island states like Tuvalu and Palau are seeking redress from the international courts to establish a legal means of holding polluters accountable.

Rich nations like the USA and UK have contributed far more to climate change than islands like Antigua, which cruelly are being disproportionately damaged. "The polluter must pay," he said.

"I don't know that we can sit back and rely on the voluntary acts", because so far there has been only "creeping progress", he said.

Read more: COP27: Don't water down pact at the last minute, island nations implore major economies at climate talks

He and the other small islands in his negotiating bloc are demanding the negotiations result in a new fund to pay compensation for those climate impacts that are beyond the realms of human adaptation - for example hurricanes supercharged by climate change that leave homes and the tourism industry in tatters.

0:56

COP27 started with a breakthrough as the issue of "finance" made it onto the agenda for the first time. Rich countries historically resisted the idea but are slowly coming round to it after extreme climate impacts at home and in vulnerable countries, such as severe flooding in Pakistan.

Today, as the second week of COP27 got underway, two options emerged in a draft document. While vulnerable nations want a dedicated fund, developed countries say there are already many funding options and institutions available that can be tweaked and improved.

They argue this could be more efficient than agreeing another dedicated fund, but the idea simply does not wash with many vulnerable countries who say they are fed up of relying on voluntary and vague measures.
Watch the Daily Climate Show at 3.30pm Monday to Friday, and The Climate Show with Tom Heap on Saturday and Sunday at 3.30pm and 7.30pm. All on Sky News, on the Sky News website and app, on YouTube and Twitter. The show investigates how global warming is changing our landscape and highlights solutions to the crisis.

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COP27: Antigua's PM asks 'Why should we live somewhere else?' as he says his people don't want to become climate refugees

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The leader of Antigua and Barbuda has said he will not allow his people to become climate refugees, in an indignant rebuff to the idea some citizens might have to relocate as climate breakdown bites. "Why should we, [live somewhere else]?" Gaston Browne told Sky News during the COP27 climate summit in Egypt.

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Climate migration predicted to rise in India as extreme weather worsens

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Climate migration predicted to rise in India as extreme weather worsens

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Seasonal migration due to extreme weather events like floods, droughts cyclones is very common in UttarPradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan. In a survey 70% responded, that they had to migrate after such an event.

Many migrate as they cannot work in agriculture or fishing anymore and move to work in construction in urban areas.

Social protection in India does not enhance people´s climate resilience.

India is one of the most climate change vulnerable countries. There is a need to plan for the people who will have to move due to climate change.

Main questions:

Do people in UttarPradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan migrate because of seasonal extreme wether?

What are basic proposals of reform in favour of climate migrants.

(Jonas)

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Climate migration predicted to rise in India as extreme weather worsens

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The frequency of heatwaves will be up to four times higher, cyclone intensity will increase and sea level will rise by 30 cm (12 inches) if action is not taken, the report said

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Tangier Island, facing oblivion, waits to see: Will Congress help?

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Tangier Island, facing oblivion, waits to see: Will Congress help?

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Main ideas:

Majority in island community rapidly losing their island homes and jobs to rising sea levels do not believe in human-caused climate change, instead believe erosion is solely to blame

Sensational media coverage has boosted the town's profile and transformed the story into a national conversation over what actions the US federal government should take on behalf of coastal communities losing land

Government funding in this context was used to protect wildlife on uninhabited islands while human-inhabited islands had difficulty acquiring funding

Questions this piece answers:

How do political beliefs and beliefs about climate change influence the strategies employed by people threatened by sea level rise who want to avoid relocation?

Which external social actors have vested interests in preventing the forced relocation of small communities experiencing sea level rise, and how is their support won?

(Sam)

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Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), right, talks with Tangier Mayor James "Ooker" Eskridge during a boat tour around Tangier Island on Aug. 30. (Kristen Zeis for The Washington Post)

TANGIER, Va. - Mayor James "Ooker" Eskridge ushered his visitors onto a boat for a tour of the disappearing shoreline of his island, turned to Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) and said: "Thinking of passing a new ordinance that says any visitor has to bring a rock."

He could be joking, but then again, maybe not. These days, the sinking island in the middle of the Chesapeake Bay will take any help it can get, as rising sea level and accelerating erosion threaten to make the island uninhabitable in as little as one generation.Every day, the relentless waves crash against the mostly unprotected shoreline. Standing water pools in some residents' front yards, some resembling wetlands already, some lined with family gravestones, because the island does not have any more land to spare for burials.

"When I talk about saving the island, I'm not talking about just a small piece of land or a building. I'm talking about saving the whole island - the people, the culture, a whole way of life," Eskridge told Kaine at the back of the boat, as it idled just offshore from the island's least-protected areas.

The 400-plus residents in this devoutly religious, solidly conservative fishing town have been pleading for years for investments to save the island - while standing defiant against warnings that they may have to one day abandonit as "climate change refugees." But this clear-skied Wednesday afternoon, Kaine and Rep. Elaine Luria (D-Va.) journeyed across the Chesapeake by ferry to deliver - tentatively, at least - some good news: Help may finally be on the way.

Kaine and Sen. Mark R. Warner (D-Va.) had secured $25 million in the Senate budget proposal to fund a pilot project that would repurpose dredging material hauled from navigation channels to be deposited on Tangier Island - serving as a natural buffer against erosion and sea-level rise. If the budget and project pass Congress, it would mark the largest investment in protecting the island in decades, said David Schulte, a marine biologist with the Army Corps of Engineers who has studied the island's shrinking land mass.

The project, Schulte said, could also turn Tangier Island into a poster child for a pressing moral question as climate change threatens the fates of many small, coastal communities like Tangier: How far is the federal government willing to go to save them? Or would it rather evacuate and abandon them, letting the sea swallow the remains of their homes?

"That's something that's really going to need to be answered, I think, as a nation: What are we going to do with these small towns that cannot pay for these large projects to save themselves?" Schulte said. Often, he said, "the large cities with the big tax bases can get help, while everybody else is left to fend for themselves. That's what gives me real hope about this Tangier project, because what you have here is a small town that [could] get significant help, and that is one of the first times I've seen that."

Tangier, known for its unique dialect and a local economy that revolves around crabbing and tourists, has lost two-thirds of its land mass since 1850 at anaverage rate of eight acres a year, according to Schulte's prior research. The town has been losing population too, with its young people heading off to college or jobs on the mainland. Eight students graduated from the town's school this past spring - "that was a large class," Eskridge said - while just one student will be enrolled in kindergarten next year, the student's grandmother said.

But the community has been seeing some encouraging growth too: A long-shuttered grocery store is slated to reopen, and so is a bed-and-breakfast, signs of how the island could thrive for the younger generations - if they could get protection from the ocean.

"We've had a lot of folks who moved to the mainland who said they would move back, if the island were protected," Eskridge told Kaine.

Tangier's dire circumstances made headlines around the world during the Trump era after a CNN crew visited the island in June 2017 and reported that many residents did not acknowledge some of the main threats to their home's survival: the rising sea level and human-caused climate change. Most preferred to focus on stopping the erosion they could see happening with their own eyes.

The story caught the attention of President Donald Trump after Eskridge also told the reporter that he loved Trump "as much as any family member I got." About 90 percent of voters on the island supported Trumpin 2016 and 2020, and "Trump 2024" flags fly from fishing shanties and greet tour boats as they pull into the docks.

As Eskridge tells it, he was out crabbing when a fellow resident told him the president had called to talk to him. "President of what?" Eskridge said- only to soon hear Trump's voice on the other end of the line at home. He said Trump told him that he also believed that rising sea level was not a threat to the island, and that the residents had nothing to worry about - Tangier would be around for hundreds of years to come.

Trump calls mayor of shrinking Chesapeake island and tells him not to worry about it

The story exploded. Soon Eskridge was on national television onstage at a CNN town hall telling former president Al Gore that he had lived on the island his whole life and the sea level didn't look any different to him: "If sea level rise is occurring, why am I not seeing signs of it?" The erosion he could see.Gore said a big challenge for scientists was being able to translate the threats of climate change in an understandable way so that people "can see the consequences in their own lives."

But on Tangier, while there may be some disagreement about the underlying cause of the threat to their island, there's little debate about the urgency to address it - and the spotlight, Eskridge said, seems to have made a difference. Trump may not have taken up Eskridge on an invitation to visit the island - but journalists from 42 countries did, Eskridge said. Two years ago, with a combination of state and federal funding, the Army Corps constructed a small jetty at the entrance of the main channel, a portion of a larger Corps project that had been delayed for roughly two decadesdue to funding issues.

And now this, the potential $25 million pilot project awaiting approval in Congress - the largest investment since the Corps built a rock sea wall on the western portion of the island in 1989.

Back on the boat with Kaine and Luria, Eskridge was already thinking about all the ways the island could use the dredging material to beef up the shoreline or the uplands. The only hitch: where to start?

Eskridge said some conversations he'd had with government scientists years ago have haunted him: He said he was once told he might not be able to save the entire island, requiring him to triage which areas to save first - something that struck him as an impossible choice.

"So you have to be deciding what you want to save and what you want to let go of," Eskridge recalled being told."We're such a small island, we really can't let any area go." I mean over here you have the businesses and the harbor, and here you have the homes.

"So you gotta got to look at it as: What's phase one? What's phase two?" Kaine said.

Eskridge said recent research estimating how much money it would take to fully protect the island has had some residents feeling nervous and discouraged.

A research paper that Schulte co-wrote with his son last year as an update to his 2015 paper found that the uplands - the three ridges where residents live, just four feet above sea level - were converting into wetlands due to rising sea level at a faster rate than previously thought, and if sea-level rise continued as expected, the island would be uninhabitable by 2053.

To fully protect and restore the island, Schulte estimated it could cost between $250 million to $350 million. The $25 million proposed project would "make a significant difference as far as extending the life of the island," he said - but added that more would need to be done.

Kaine had been fighting for the funding to protect Tangier for several years, even writing with Warner to Trump to propose they partner up to save the island (Trump didn't respond, Kaine said). But he said it was so hard to get Congress to provide funds to help Tangier because federal funding formulas could require local governments to put up matching funds for projects - money that places like Tangier simply did not have. The $25 million project, however, was the result of Congress bringing back "earmarks," which allows lawmakers to set aside funds for local projects, Kaine said. This project has no local-match requirement.

Why Sen. Kaine wants to save Trump Country from sinking into the Chesapeake

In recent years, residents had watched with frustration as the federal government funded projects to protect a National Wildlife Refuge and residents on nearby Smith Island and to restore a wildlife habitat on Poplar Island, where no people live - using the same method on Poplar of repurposing dredge material.

Norwood Evans, Tangier's vice mayor who believes both sea-level rise and erosion are threatening the island, said it was painful to see ships carrying dredging material to Poplar pass right on by Tangier, where hundreds of people were worried about their future.

"It just kind of hurt," he said, "when your island's in need and it's going by."

Returning to the island from their tour, Kaine and Luria and a representative from the Army Corps led a town hall at the Four Brothers Crab Shack to take questions from Tangier residents, eliciting a combination of gratitude and dread.

The first woman to ask a question wanted to know, in as many words: Why had the government been willing to put up the money to save wildlife on Poplar, but not them?

The woman, Linda Clary - "I am lovingly called a Come Here; I came on a sailboat and never left" - noted that the island just celebrated the 98th birthday of the town's oldest veteran, and shouldn't its decades of military service to the country count for something?

"I think the patriots and the veterans of Tangier Island are more important than a flock of birds and a group of turtles," Clary said. "And I resent it that we still - we got to have another study, we got to have this, we got to have that, to get anything done. Because we are losing the battle.We are losing the battle."

Kaine offered a note of optimism about the money for Tangier in the proposed budget: "$25 million can do a lot of good. I don't think we're going to be done. ... Let's get this started with a big number, not a small number."

"We get the job started, and it's more reason to keep going - protect that first investment," town councilman Tommy Eskridge agreed, sitting in the front in a Trump hat and Trump T-shirt.

Kaine added that he believed the island's designation on the National Register of Historic Places should be reason enough for Congress to protect the whole island.

"It's more than just x-hundred people and here's the property value - it's history, it's culture, it's something unique you can't find anywhere else in the country," he said.

"It's worth saving," Clary said.
View 3 more stories

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Tangier Island, facing oblivion, waits to see: Will Congress help?

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TANGIER, Va. - Mayor James "Ooker" Eskridge ushered his visitors onto a boat for a tour of the disappearing shoreline of his island, turned to Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) and said: "Thinking of passing a new ordinance that says any visitor has to bring a rock."

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Delay could mean death for climate migrants - Salinity forcing coastal people to move to the cities for livelihoods

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Delay could mean death for climate migrants - Salinity forcing coastal people to move to the cities for livelihoods

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-Climate migration to Dhaka leads to an overburden system. Especially the liveability in slums is heavily affected as more people move there.

-Salinity leads to a lack of fresh water supply and makes agriculture less productive and ultimately impossible. Drinking salt water has severe health consequences.

-Bangladesh is a small emitter but extremely vulnerable to rising sea levels and salination. Therefore the foreign minister Dr AK Abdul Momen calls heavy polluters to meet their climate promises.

Main questions:
How many people are affected of salination in Bangladesh?
What are the health risks of salination?
What are the economic risks of salination?
How do climate migrants affect hosting urban areas.
Question of climate justice.

(Jonas)

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Delay could mean death for climate migrants

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Salinity forcing coastal people to move to the cities for livelihoods

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Communities 'rooted in this soil' face a managed retreat from climate change and rising waters

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Communities 'rooted in this soil' face a managed retreat from climate change and rising waters

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Main ideas:

"Managed retreat" - planned relocation of people vulnerable to flooding and rising sea levels

People have intertwined cultural and economic ties to their homes

The threat of sea level rise to historically oppressed communities is exacerbated by continued economic development and gentrification, a lack of support from governments, and by the inherent risk to cultural history and life

Questions this piece answers:

Why is the idea of managed retreat a lifeline for some communities and the end of a way of life for others that are both facing loss of land due to climate change?

Which factors cause individuals to delay relocation when facing expected disasters like flooding and rising seas?

(Sam)

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Communities ‘rooted in this soil’ face a managed retreat from climate change and rising waters

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Communities in coastal areas of the United States are having to consider a “managed retreat” from climate change as rising waters and destructive storms threaten their way of life.

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The town at the center of California’s climate refugee crisis

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The town at the center of California’s climate refugee crisis

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Report on people displaced by fires in their town of Chico, California. The housing troubles, that began years before the fire, were exacerbated by the fire. Before the fire the county had already declared a shelter crisis, and then the fire displaced more than 50 000 people. This also increased social tensions in the town, with inhabitants concerned about “which homeless were deserving and which one’s were not” and treatening with “citizen’s arrests” and violence against “illegal campers” and their “helpers” — “Disaster Capitalism in action”.

Questions:

What happens when natural disasters are exacerbated by the climate crisis?

What are the economic and social consequences?

What are the institutions doing? County government, NGOs, companies?

Who is the most disadvantaged?

How are the residents doing?

What did/does the housing market look like?

(Francesca)

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fter Julia Cheek lost all of her belongings in the Camp fire, she longed for a safe place to lay her head at night. When she finally received a check from the California utility that had caused the fire, Cheek used it to buy the only home she could afford: a 2010 Nissan Xterra.

Cheek didn't have insurance and has struggled to secure permanent housing since the fire, remaining among the growing population of unhoused residents in this northern California outpost.

"I would prefer to have a bed to sleep in, not a car," said the 58-year-old, who shares her "home" with her partner John Hatch, and her dog, Shelby. "I'm getting too old for this."

Cheek's disaster began in November 2018, when a crumbling component of a Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) power line cast sparks into the dry brush of the Sierra Nevada foothills, creating a fire that would kill 85 people, destroy about 14,000 homes and level the town of Paradise.

Like thousands of other fire refugees, Cheek evacuated to Chico, a college town 20 minutes from Paradise popular for its parks and hiking. But the city was already grappling with a vast housing shortage, making finding a permanent place a nearly impossible task for residents like Cheek who had been struggling to make ends meet.

What unfolded in Chico since the fire is a case study for what happens when natural disasters - exacerbated by the climate crisis - meet growing inequality, housing advocates say: A housing shortage severe even by California's standards, residents pushed out of the area or onto the streets, and a community deeply divided over how to solve the crisis.

"We are witnessing what is coming to everyone else, which is ever greater homeless populations due to climate displacement," said Ed Mayer, the executive director of the housing authority in Butte county, where Chico and Paradise are located.

"We are now dealing with permanently displaced populations. I call them refugees. These people are so disfranchised from our system they might as well not have a country. These are people without homes, without resources and, quite frankly, without a government to count on.

Chico's housing troubles began years before the Camp fire. Butte county had long been considered a more affordable region of California, attracting people priced out of other parts of the state who were drawn to its natural beauty, friendly communities and slower-paced lifestyle.

But the area, like the rest of California, failed to build enough housing to keep up with demand. The housing the county did build often didn't meet the needs of many of its households, about a fifth of whom live at or below the poverty line, a rate that has held steady for years.

In the months leading up to the fire, about 1% of units stood vacant, making it extremely difficult for anyone to find housing, but particularly for those with fewer resources. More and more people ended up on the streets, and homelessness was becoming an increasingly contentious issue. Chico city council meetings regularly stretched into the early morning hours as residents and officials argued about installing 24-hour restrooms, a restrictive sit and lie ordinance, and whether community groups should continue providing free meals to unhoused people in city parks.

Just over a month before the Camp fire tore through the area, Butte county officials declared a " shelter crisis," in an effort to access additional funding. "If by any other reason, 400 people became homeless by earthquake, flood, fire; we'd have tents up tomorrow. This issue has come on us slowly, and because it's poverty we're slow to get up to speed," Charles Withuhn, a longtime housing advocate, said at the time.

Then came the Camp fire. The flames chewed through miles of vegetation and burned from the isolated mountain hamlet of Concow to Paradise and the nearby community of Magalia. The blaze displaced more than 50,000 people. Butte county, and Chico in particular, initially welcomed fire survivors with open arms, coining the phrase "Butte strong." A Walmart in Chico became a center for evacuees and people eager to help came to distribute hot meals, gift cards and donations to the displaced.

But almost immediately, tensions rose in the city, with some residents concerned about the unhoused population taking resources meant for fire victims. "There was the deserving homeless and all these other people who've been homeless for lots of other reasons, but they weren't deserving. That was the way it all came down," said Benson Benson, who was unhoused in Chico on and off for 15 years, of the debates at the time.

Meanwhile, Chico and Butte county's housing stock was pushed to its limits. Displaced residents and firefighters filled up motel rooms and the few available rentals. Many fire refugees who received insurance settlements chose to buy new homes, rather than wait to rebuild in the burn scar, sending Chico's housing market booming. Some longtime Chico residents lost their rentals as their landlords took advantage of a seller's market.

In the months after the fire, one count found the county's homeless population had climbed 16% to 2,304 people. Those who couldn't find a place to stay bunked with family, slept in their cars or camped.

"We saw disaster capitalism in action," said Cathryn Carkhuff, the executive director of Home and Heart, a program that matches people in need of housing to homeowners with space. "There was price gouging, even though it was not legal ... You take an area that had a housing crisis before the Camp fire, and then add 20,000 people overnight, and it was disastrous."

Among those struggling to find a place to stay was Cheek. In 2018, before the disaster, Cheek had just returned to the area after living in Ohio for two decades. She was grappling with homelessness for the first time in her life, but had found a place to stay in Paradise thanks to the Sojourner House on the Ridge, a nonprofit where she volunteered.

When the Camp fire approached in November, Cheek and her partner woke to booming sounds she thought were from a storm. They fled to a church where they sheltered through the night as flames scorched the windows.

With all of her belongings destroyed, she, like hundreds of others, initially camped out in a tent in Chico. Some fire refugees received help from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) or insurance payouts, but Cheek struggled to get her life back on track.

She and Hatch bounced from place to place, looking for jobs. The couple stayed in at least six different cities across northern California in tents, trailers and a motel converted into housing.

The money Cheek got from PG&E is the most support she's received. But it's not enough to buy a house. The median home listing price in Chico in April was $495,000, while a one-bedroom apartment in the city rents for about $1,000 a month.

Filling up the Nissan is expensive, but the vehicle has room for the waste that Cheek and Hatch recycle for income and private space to rest, a welcome change. It also helps put them out of sight of the public.

In recent years, unhoused encampments have sprung up at parks across Chico. Service providers say the number of unhoused people in the city has only grown since the fire, becoming more visible during the pandemic.

Officials tallied roughly 2,300 unhoused people in the county in 2019, a point-in-time count that is widely considered an undercount. The results of the most recent count are not yet available, but providers estimate the rates are greater than in 2019. The county estimated in 2021 that there were as many as 6,000 to 7,000 unhoused households in the Chico and Oroville area living in trailers and tents, many of them displaced by the Camp fire and 2020 wildfires.

"The homeless population exploded," said Addison Winslow, a housing advocate. "People were struggling like people never struggled before: getting evicted and having to find a new place, routinely needing to move and not being able to and facing rent increases."

The demographics among the unhoused population have changed as well, with nonprofits increasingly seeing older adults and people with disabilities on the street, said Sierra Schmidt, the founder of the housing non-profit Home and Heart.

As the emergency has grown more visible, valley residents have been divided over the path forward.

Some residents have argued for strict policies toward unhoused people, claiming their presence in city parks endangers the community and pollutes waterways. Families no longer feel safe going downtown or on popular trails, they argue, due to visible drug use and crime. At one park encampment, multiple people have overdosed, according to police, and a man died in a stabbing last year.

Conservative groups are publicly feuding with homeless advocates. The leader of one such group told the city he would engage in "citizen's arrest" against people assisting "illegal campers".

Social media groups share photos of people living in encampments, comparing them to animals or trash, said Jesica Giannola, a case manager with the Chico Housing Action Team (Chat), a nonprofit that provides housing to hundreds of people experiencing homelessness. Passerby sometimes scream profanities and degrading names at her clients as they drive by, she said.

Last year, a teenager was arrested after walking into a community at a Chico wetland and shooting two unhoused men, one of whom died.

"It's open season on the homeless," said Larry Halstead, a Camp fire survivor and a client of Giannola. Halstead, 69, met Cheek and Hatch shortly after he arrived on the streets. The three of them collected recycling together, which gave Halstead income to eat and to buy the tent he slept in before receiving housing through Chat.

The former businessman and Democratic activist was living in Magalia when the fire incinerated his home, and bounced around in temporary living situations with his family before becoming homeless in Chico in 2020 while dealing with cancer.

By then, the town's compassion was gone, he said, and instead residents and police hassled him, telling him to "get over it", Halstead recalled on a recent Saturday as he sat with Cheek and Hatch in the same park where authorities once hounded him.

Now, after living indoors for the last few months, he could sit freely under the trees without anyone bothering him. For her part, Cheek, with her clean clothes and neat ponytail, was often spared the harassment many other unhoused people face.

Chico has a history of punitive policies toward unhoused people. A law dating back to 2013 made it illegal to sit or lie on sidewalks and entryways around businesses overnight, while another ordinance prevents camping on public property in the city.

The intent of the ordinances, when combined, seemed to be to make it "impossible for anyone who is unhoused to just be anywhere", said Juan Araujo Sariñana, a member of Chico DSA, a volunteer group that does mutual aid at local encampments. The crackdown ramped up in late 2020 when city officials started increasingly criminalizing homelessness, advocates say, adopting criminal penalties for camping in city parks and "open spaces" after hours. Last year, with a new conservative majority on the city council, Chico began evicting unhoused people from encampments and threatening them with arrest despite the pandemic.

It was dystopian, said Angela McLaughlin, an advocate who saw some of the evictions first-hand. "It was horrifying. People were told to move everything," she said. "You would see people leaving most of their stuff behind, weeping and pleading."

The city's answer was to move people along, even if there was nowhere for them to go. A city councilor, Sean Morgan, told a local radio station: "The [Chico] police department is gonna keep moving them, and they're gonna keep moving them."

Chico soon faced federal litigation over its policies toward the homeless, and an injunction forcing the city to stop restricting people from sleeping or camping on public property until it could provide indoor shelter space. The city settled and under the agreement, opened new pallet shelters that can house 177 people.

"It's a big deal," Winslow, the housing advocate, said of the shelter. "They actually have somewhere to go. It's far from ideal, but they'll make a big change in people's lives."

Community organizations and volunteers continue to try to fill in the gaps, bringing meals and personal supplies to encampments and trying to supply housing to the people they can. "There's not super easy solutions," said Nicole Drummond, the executive director of the Chico Housing Action Team. "The climate refugees have just increased everything exponentially."

Ultimately the only way out of the crisis, advocates say, is with more housing. Butte county needs thousands more units to house all its residents, homes that the people who live here can actually afford. County officials estimate that for every studio and one bedroom in town, there are 10 households who want it.

Prior to the Camp fire, officials with the housing authority estimated it would take 6,000 units of affordable housing to level the playing field in the county. More than $1bn in funding has poured into the area to help Butte county construct more affordable housing - about 2,500 units are on the way - which amounts to the largest investment in affordable housing on a per capita basis in US history, Mayer said. It also means what happens in Butte county could have implications for the rest of the US as climate disasters become more common.

"We're in the middle of a grand experiment," he said. "Our question is will it move the needle."

Chico continues to boom. The city is moving forward with what would be the largest development in its history, Valley's Edge, which would bring nearly 3,000 units to the fire prone foothills in the south-east.

Cheek is making plans too. If she gets additional settlement money from PG&E, she'd like to buy a small camper trailer to attach to her vehicle with more room to stretch out and make meals for her friends who live on the street. "I'd have a place to sleep, and a place to cook."

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The town at the center of California's climate refugee crisis

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fter Julia Cheek lost all of her belongings in the Camp fire, she longed for a safe place to lay her head at night. When she finally received a check from the California utility that had caused the fire, Cheek used it to buy the only home she could afford: a 2010 Nissan Xterra.

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Climate migration is about to explode. Cities will bear the brunt.

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Climate migration is about to explode. Cities will bear the brunt.

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- climate migration will largely occur within countries (in the global south), from rural areas to urban areas
- cities should receive private funding to create useful jobs for climate refugees

QUESTIONS:
- How can climate migration become beneficial to recieving cities?
- How can cities in the global south generate funding for taking in and providing useful jobs to climate refugees?

(Nino)

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The century of climate migration: why we need to plan for the great upheaval

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The century of climate migration: why we need to plan for the great upheaval

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- Main predictions: large populations will need to migrate across continents due to climate migrations, nations in northern latitudes will need to accommodate millions of migrants, demographic issues (North: "top-heavy" crises, global south: big increases in population)

- Argues that surviving climate breakdown will require a planned and deliberate migration

Questions:
- What does the future in regards to climate migration look like? How many people will be at risk and where will they go?
- How should we view the concept of migration ?
- How can one envision a sustainable world in regards to migration and national boundaries ?

Possible Research Question:
Which global policies could be employed in regards to climate-displaced people?

(Stella)

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A great upheaval is coming. Climate-driven movement of people is adding to a massive migration already under way to the world's cities. The number of migrants has doubled globally over the past decade, and the issue of what to do about rapidly increasing populations of displaced people will only become greater and more urgent. To survive climate breakdown will require a planned and deliberate migration of a kind humanity has never before undertaken.

The world already sees twice as many days where temperatures exceed 50C than 30 years ago - this level of heat is deadly for humans, and also hugely problematic for buildings, roads and power stations. It makes an area unliveable. This explosive planetary drama demands a dynamic human response. We need to help people to move from danger and poverty to safety and comfort - to build a more resilient global society for everyone's benefit.

Large populations will need to migrate, and not simply to the nearest city, but also across continents. Those living in regions with more tolerable conditions, especially nations in northern latitudes, will need to accommodate millions of migrants while themselves adapting to the demands of the climate crisis. We will need to create entirely new cities near the planet's cooler poles, in land that is rapidly becoming ice-free. Parts of Siberia, for example, are already experiencing temperatures of 30C for months at a time.

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Arctic areas are burning, with mega-blazes devouring Siberia, Greenland and Alaska. Even in January, peat fires were burning in the Siberian cryosphere, despite temperatures below -50C. These zombie fires smoulder year round in the peat below ground, in and around the Arctic Circle, only to burst into huge blazes that rage across the boreal forests of Siberia, Alaska and Canada.

In 2019, colossal fires destroyed more than 4m hectares of Siberian taiga forest, blazing for more than three months, and producing a cloud of soot and ash as large as the countries that make up the entire European Union. Models predict that fires in the boreal forests and Arctic tundra will increase by up to four times by 2100.

Wherever you live now, migration will affect you and the lives of your children. It is predictable that Bangladesh, a country where one-third of the population lives along a sinking, low-lying coast, is becoming uninhabitable. (More than 13 million Bangladeshis - nearly 10% of the population - are expected to have left the country by 2050.) But in the coming decades wealthy nations will be severely affected, too.

This upheaval occurs not only at a time of unprecedented climate change but also of human demographic change. Global population will continue to rise in the coming decades, peaking at perhaps 10 billion in the 2060s. Most of this increase will be in the tropical regions that are worst hit by climate catastrophe, causing people there to flee northwards. The global north faces the opposite problem - a "top-heavy" demographic crisis, in which a large elderly population is supported by a too-small workforce. North America and Europe have 300 million people above the traditional retirement age (65+), and by 2050, the economic old-age dependency ratio there is projected to be at 43 elderly persons per 100 working persons aged 20-64. Cities from Munich to Buffalo will begin competing with each other to attract migrants.

An aerial view of Fairbourne village in Gwynedd, north Wales, expected to be abandoned by 2045. Photograph: Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP

The coming migration will involve the world's poorest fleeing deadly heatwaves and failed crops. It will also include the educated, the middle class, people who can no longer live where they planned because it's impossible to get a mortgage or property insurance; because employment has moved elsewhere. The climate crisis has already uprooted millions in the US - in 2018, 1.2 million were displaced by extreme conditions, fire, storms and flooding; by 2020, the annual toll had risen to 1.7 million people. The US now averages a $1bn disaster every 18 days.

More than half of the western US is facing extreme drought conditions, and farmers in Oregon's Klamath Basin talk about illegally using force to open dam gates for irrigation. At the other extreme, fatal floods have stranded thousands of people from Death Valley to Kentucky. By 2050, half a million existing US homes will be on land that floods at least once a year, according to data from Climate Central, a partnership of scientists and journalists. Louisiana's Isle de Jean Charles has already been allocated $48m of federal tax dollars to move the entire community due to coastal erosion and rising sea levels; in Britain, the Welsh villagers of Fairbourne have been told their homes should be abandoned to the encroaching sea as the entire village is to be "decommissioned" in 2045. Larger coastal cities are at risk, too. Consider that the Welsh capital, Cardiff, is projected to be two-thirds underwater by 2050.

The UN International Organization for Migration has cited estimates of as many as 1 billion environmental migrants in the next 30 years, while more recent projections point to 1.2 billion by 2050, and 1.4 billion by 2060. After 2050, that figure is expected to soar as the world heats further and the global population rises to its predicted peak in the mid 2060s.

The question for humanity becomes: what does a sustainable world look like? We will need to develop an entirely new way of feeding, fuelling and maintaining our lifestyles, while also reducing atmospheric carbon levels. We will need to live in denser concentrations in fewer cities, while reducing the associated risks of crowded populations, including power outages, sanitation problems, overheating, pollution and infectious disease.

At least as challenging, though, will be the task of overcoming the idea that we belong to a particular land and that it belongs to us. We will need to assimilate into globally diverse societies, living in new, polar cities. We will need to be ready to move again when necessary. With every degree of temperature increase, roughly 1 billion people will be pushed outside the zone in which humans have lived for thousands of years. We are running out of time to manage the coming upheaval before it becomes overwhelming and deadly.

Migration is not the problem; it is the solution.

How we manage this global crisis, and how humanely we treat each other as we migrate, will be key to whether this century of upheaval proceeds smoothly or with violent conflict and unnecessary deaths. Managed right, this upheaval could lead to a new global commonwealth of humanity. Migration is our way out of this crisis.

Migration, whether from disaster to safety, or for a new land of opportunity, is deeply interwoven with cooperation - it is only through our extensive collaborations that we are able to migrate, and it's our migrations that forged today's global society. Migration made us. It is our national identities and borders that are the anomaly.

The idea of keeping foreign people out using borders is relatively recent. States used to be far more concerned about stopping people from leaving than preventing their arrival. They needed their labour and taxes.

Some may think that it's flags, anthems and an army to guard your territory that's needed to develop a sense of nationhood. But in fact, the credit should go to a successful bureaucracy. Greater government intervention in people's lives and the creation of a broad systemic bureaucracy were needed to run a complex industrial society and these also forged national identity in its citizens. For instance, Prussia began paying unemployment benefit in the 1880s, which was issued initially in a worker's home village, where people and their circumstances were known. But it was also paid to people where they migrated for work, which meant a new layer of bureaucracy to establish who was Prussian and therefore entitled to benefits. This resulted in citizenship papers and controlled borders. As governments exerted greater control, people got more state benefits from their taxes, and more rights, such as voting, which engendered a feeling of ownership over the state. It became their nation.

Nation states are an artificial social structure predicated on the mythology that the world is made of distinct, homogenous groups that occupy separate portions of the globe, and claim most people's primary allegiance. The reality is far messier. Most people speak the languages of multiple groups, and ethnic and cultural pluralism is the norm. The idea that a person's identity and wellbeing is primarily tied to that of one invented national group is far-fetched, even if this is presupposed by many governments. The political scientist Benedict Anderson famously described nation states as "imagined communities".

An Afghan family relocating from a drought-stricken area the country's Badghis province in 2021. Photograph: Hoshang Hashimi/AFP/Getty Images

It is hardly surprising that the nation-state model so often fails - there have been about 200 civil wars since 1960. However, there are plenty of examples of nation states that work well despite being made up of different groups, such as Singapore, Malaysia and Tanzania, or nations created from global migrants like Australia, Canada and the US. To some degree, all nation states have been formed from a mixture of groups. When nation states falter or fail, the problem is not diversity itself, but not enough official inclusiveness - equity in the eyes of the state, regardless of which other groups a person belongs to. An insecure government allied to a specific group, which it favours over others, breeds discontent and pitches one group against others - this results in people falling back on trusted alliances based on kinship, rather.

A democracy with a mandate of official inclusiveness from its people is generally more stable - but it needs underpinning by a complex bureaucracy. Nations have navigated this in various ways, for example, devolving power to local communities, giving them voice and agency over their own affairs within the nation state (as is the case in Canada, or Switzerland's cantons). By embracing multiple groups, languages and cultures as equally legitimate, a country like Tanzania can function as a national mosaic of at least 100 different ethnic groups and languages. In Singapore, which has consciously pursued an integrated multi-ethnic population, at least one-fifth of marriages are interracial. Unjust hierarchies between groups make this harder, particularly when imposed on a majority by a minority.

In April 2021, Governor Kristi Noem tweeted: "South Dakota won't be taking any illegal immigrants that the Biden administration wants to relocate. My message to illegal immigrants ... call me when you're an American."

Consider that South Dakota only exists because thousands of undocumented immigrants from Europe used the Homestead Act from 1860 to 1920 to steal land from Native Americans without compensation or reparations. This kind of exclusive attitude from a leader weakens the sense of shared citizenship among all, creating divisions between residents who are deemed to belong and those who are not.

Official inclusion by the national bureaucracy is a starting point for building national identity in all citizens, particularly with a large influx of migrants, but the legacy of decades or centuries of injustice persists socially, economically and politically.

The frontline in Europe's war against migrants is the Mediterranean Sea, patrolled by Italian warships tasked with intercepting small EU-bound vessels and forcing them instead to ports in Libya on the north African coast. One such warship, the Caprera, was singled out for praise by Italy's anti-migrant interior minister for "defending our security", after it intercepted more than 80 migrant boats, carrying more than 7,000 people. "Honour!" he tweeted, posting a photo of himself with the crew in 2018.

However, during an inspection of the Caprera that same year, police discovered more than 700,000 contraband cigarettes and large numbers of other smuggled goods imported by the crew from Libya to be sold for profit in Italy. On further investigation, the smuggling enterprise turned out to involve several other military ships. "I felt like Dante descending into the inferno," said Lt Col Gabriele Gargano, the police officer who led the investigation.

The case highlights a central absurdity around today's attitude to migration. Immigration controls are regarded as essential - but for people, not stuff. Huge effort goes into enabling the cross-border migration of goods, services and money. Every year more than 11bn tonnes of stuff is shipped around the world - the equivalent of 1.5 tonnes per person a year - whereas humans, who are key to all this economic activity, are unable to move freely. Industrialised nations with big demographic challenges and important labour shortages are blocked from employing migrants who are desperate for jobs.

Currently, there is no global body or organisation overseeing the movement of people worldwide. Governments belong to the International Organization for Migration, but this is an independent, "related organisation" of the UN, rather than an actual UN agency: it is not subject to the direct oversight of the general assembly and cannot set common policy that would enable countries to capitalise on the opportunities immigrants offer. Migrants are usually managed by each individual nation's foreign ministry, rather than the labour ministry, so decisions are made without the information or coordinated policies to match people with job markets. We need a new mechanism to manage global labour mobility far more effectively and efficiently - it is our biggest economic resource, after all.

The aftermath of wildfires that burned more than 1m hectares of forests in Siberia's Krasnoyarsk territory in 2019. Photograph: Donat Sorokin/Tass

The conversation about migration has become stuck on what ought to be allowed, rather than planning for what will occur. Nations need to move on from the idea of controlling to managing migration. At the very least, we need new mechanisms for lawful economic labour migration and mobility, and far better protection for those fleeing danger.

Within days of Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February, EU leaders enacted an open-border policy for refugees fleeing the conflict, giving them the right to live and work across the bloc for three years, and helping with housing, education, transport and other needs. The policy undoubtedly saved lives but additionally, by not requiring millions of people to go through protracted asylum processes, the refugees were able to disperse to places where they could better help themselves and be helped by local communities. Across the EU, people came together in their communities, on social media, and through institutions to organise ways of hosting refugees.

They offered rooms in their homes, collected donations of clothes and toys, set up language camps and mental health support - all of which was legal because of the open-border policy. This reduced the burden for central government, host towns and refugees alike.

Migration requires funds, contacts and courage. It usually involves a degree of hardship, at least initially, as people are wrenched from their families, familiar surroundings and language. Some countries make it almost impossible to move for work, and in others, parents are forced to leave behind children who they may never see grow up. An entire generation of Chinese children has reached adulthood seeing their parents only for a week or so once a year, during spring festival.

In China, hundreds of millions of people are caught in limbo between the village and cities, unable to fully transition due to archaic land laws and the lack of social housing, childcare, schools or other public facilities in the cities. The villages are sustained through remittances from absent workers, who cannot sell their farms for fear of losing their land, which is their only social security. Left-behind, isolated children then become primary caregivers for their ageing relatives. Migrant workers cannot afford to buy homes in the city and so return to the village on retirement, restarting the cycle.

In other cases, migrants pay huge fees to people traffickers for urban or foreign work, only to find themselves in indentured positions that are little better than slavery, working out their "contracts" until they can get their passports back and return home. What little money they do earn will be sent home. These include Asian construction workers and domestic workers in the Middle East and Europe, who have little protection and may end up in forced labour in the sex industry or in inhumane conditions in food processing or garment factories. Most migrants are trying to improve their lives, as we all do, by moving. Some are migrating to save their lives.

I've visited people in refugee camps in different countries across four continents, where millions of people live in limbo, sometimes for generations. Around the world, whether the refugee camps were filled with Sudanese, Tibetans, Palestinians, Syrians, Salvadorans or Iraqis, the issue was the same: people want dignity. And that means being able to provide for their families - being allowed to work, to move around, and to make a life for themselves in safety. Currently, too many nations make this wish - though it is very simple and mutually beneficial - impossible for those most in need of it. As our environment changes, millions more risk ending up in these nowhere places. Globally, this system of sealed borders and hostile migration policy is dysfunctional. It doesn't work for anyone's benefit.

A woman takes animals to safety as flood water rises in the coastal area in Khulna, Bangladesh, in August 2022. Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

We are witnessing the highest levels of human displacement on record, and it will only increase. In 2020, refugees around the world exceeded 100 million, tripling since 2010, and half were children. This means one in every 78 people on earth has been forced to flee. Registered refugees represent only a fraction of those forced to leave their homes due to war or disaster.

In addition to these, 350 million people are undocumented worldwide, an astonishing 22 million in the US alone, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees estimates. These include informal workers and those who move along ancient routes crossing national borders - these are the people who increasingly find themselves without legal recognition, living on the margins, unable to benefit from social support systems.

As long as 4.2 billion people live in poverty and the income gap between the global north and south continues to grow, people will have to move - and those living in climate-impacted regions will be disproportionately affected. Nations have an obligation to offer asylum to refugees, but under the legal definition of the refugee, written in the 1951 Refugee Convention, this does not include those who have to leave their home because of climate crisis.

Things are beginning to shift, though. In a landmark judgment, in 2020, the UN Human Rights Committee ruled that climate refugees cannot be sent home, meaning that a state would be in breach of its human rights obligations if it returns someone to a country where - due to the climate crisis - their life is in danger. However, the rulings of the committee are not internationally binding.

Today, the 50 million climate-displaced people already outnumber those fleeing political persecution. The distinction between refugees and economic migrants is rarely a straightforward one, and further complicated by the climate crisis. While the dramatic devastation of a hurricane erasing whole villages can make refugees of people overnight, more often the impacts of climate breakdown on people's lives are gradual - another poor harvest or another season of unbearable heat, which becomes the catalyst/crisis that pushes people to seek better locations.

This should give the world time to adapt to the mass migrations to come - that ultimate climate adaptation. But instead, as environments grow ever more deadly, the world's wealthiest countries spend more on militarising their borders - creating a climate "wall" - than they do on the climate emergency. The growth in offshore detention and "processing" centres for asylum seekers not only adds to the death toll, but is among the most repugnant features of the rich world's failure to ease the impact of the climate crisis on the poorest regions. We must be alert to "climate nationalists" who want to reinforce the unequal allocation of our planet's safer lands.

The planetary scale crisis demands a global climate migration pact, but in the meantime, regional free movement agreements - of the kind EU member states enjoy - would help. Such agreements have helped residents of disaster-hit Caribbean islands find refuge in safer ones.

Climate change is in most cases survivable; it is our border policies that will kill people. Human movement on a scale never before seen will dominate this century. It could be a catastrophe or, managed well, it could be our salvation.

This article was amended on 19 and 25 August 2022 to remove the suggestion that there are boreal forests in Greenland. Also, an earlier version said the International Organization for Migration "estimates that there could be as many as 1.5 billion environmental migrants in the next 30 years"; in fact, the IOM has cited estimates of up to 1 billion environmental migrants in this period.
This is an edited extract from Nomad Century: How to Survive the Climate Upheaval by Gaia Vince, published by Allen Lane on 25 August. To order a copy, go to guardianbookshop.com
Follow the Long Read on Twitter at @gdnlongread, listen to our podcasts here and sign up to the long read weekly email here.

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The century of climate migration: why we need to plan for the great upheaval

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The long read: People driven from their homes by climate disaster need protection. And ageing nations need them

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In 2050, an estimate of 3 billion people will be living in climate hotspots

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In 2050, an estimate of 3 billion people will be living in climate hotspots

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- At the COP 27, experts stated that in around 25 years the number of people living in hotspots vulnerable to climate warming will double

- In these regions the mortality is around 15 times higher then in countries less vulnerable bc. of droughts, storms, floods etc. which will lead to forced migration of millions in the years/decade to come.

- it is time for loss and damage, ambitious cut of emissions & climate friendly restructuring of the economy

questions:
- Who are the people most affected by climate change?
- What will be the implications of people living in climate hotspots?
-  How could/should the international sphere (COP) address this?

(Stella)

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2050 dürften drei Milliarden Menschen in Klima-Hotspots leben

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Das sind doppelt so viele wie heute. Die Hotspots sind Regionen, die besonders von Überschwemmungen, Dürren und Stürmen betroffen sind

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- "More people are being displaced by disasters — caused by the changing climate — than conflicts, reversing a historical trend."

- various different affects of climate change cause migration: storms, floods, extreme temperatures, droughts

- in 2020 almost 31 million people have been displaced due to climate change

- 76% of all newly caused displacements in 2020 due to disasters rather than war or conflict

-while some where confined to their homes and isolated due to the pandemic, while 40.5 million people where displaced (only nationally!!) and had to move most likely not adhering to any kind of safety standards

- is an international resettlement scheme feasible? how can we tackle these issues without one?

Sophia

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people displaced because of climate change in Mexico: the sea eats a town

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people displaced because of climate change in Mexico: the sea eats a town

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- out of 90 habitants of a community in Tabasco (a state in Mexico) 15 are at high risk of displacement and 30 already had to move due to rising sea levels

- more and more land area is "eaten" by the Gulf of Mexico

- the Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador is called out for his inaction

- the habitants are demanding to be resettled

- Greenpeace is also calling for migrants who are displaced due to environmental impacts to be on the Agenda of COP27

- how could climate refugees/migrants/displaced people due to environmental changes be classified under UN law?

(sophia)

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UN estimation: as many as 220 million migrants from the effects of climate change by 2050

Ukraine War: no immigration to Russia

Russia could possibly become World´s Breadbasket

could improve Russia´s current geopolitical standing

What are the geopolitical implications of climate migration?

Which countries will be less affected by climate change and could thereby provide other countries with resources?

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Experts warn: The world is not ready to cope with climate migration

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Experts warn: The world is not ready to cope with climate migration

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according to the U.N. each year natural disasters force an average of 21.5 million people from their homes around the world

definition climate migrant problematic

lack of understanding as to how climate is forcing people to move

currently no nation offers asylum to climate migrants

Question: How can climate migration be legally defined?

Research Question: What are the foreground characteristics of climate migration across the world?

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radio interview with sindra sharmer, global policy lead for Climate Action Network interational
- one cop27 achievement is the agreement for a loss & damage fund (after 30 years of demand), but no money has been provided so far and details of the agreement are not yet worked out

question:
- how can you evaluate and refund non-economic losses that displaced people must face?
- since environmental migration is such a multidimensional problem, how can loss & damages be calculated?
- what are the criteria to be called a climate refugee/displaced person due to climate change and how can they be refunded?

(Hannah)

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UNHCR: Refugees and displaced people need seats at COP28 table

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UNHCR: Refugees and displaced people need seats at COP28 table

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- climate refugees and displaced people were at COP 27 for the first time
- displaced people demand seats at COP28
- Almost 70% of world’s displaced people coming from most climate-vulnerable countries
- loss & damage on agenda for the 1st time
-  “there is no greater example of loss and damage than of having to flee your home and cross a border to seek refuge.”

QUESTION answered:
- What was the role of displaced people in the climate negotiations of COP27 and what should it be at COP28?

Research question:
- What is the role of loss and damage for displaced people?
- How can the perspective of 'environmental migrants' be more involved in the COP discussions on loss&damage?

(Hannah)

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Mariana [a municipality in Brazil]: 85% of families affected by the dam bursting suffer from compulsory displacement

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Mariana [a municipality in Brazil]: 85% of families affected by the dam bursting suffer from compulsory displacement

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- Loss of housing, ways of life, productive activities, community, and kinship relations. Loss of access to natural resources and food security, among several other violations, are the consequences of compulsory displacement caused by the disaster-crime of responsibility of the mining companies Samarco, Vale, and BHP since November 2015.
- At least 1246 families from the municipality of Mariana were forced to migrate, which is 85% of the total.
- 13% of the affected families moved to another municipality.
- For the victims, the experience of compulsory displacement configured a 'temporary life' in a space completely different from their communities of origin, states the researcher from GESTA/UFMG. Maryellen explains that "the distance between relatives and neighbors is a significant cause of suffering, because the dissolution of close nuclei also represented the rupture of reciprocity and solidarity networks, causing the isolation of family groups.
- The toxic waste still deposited in the affected areas, the community isolation, the impossibility to continue with productive activities, and the consequent impoverishment are some of the suffering factors for many families that continue to live in the territory of origin. That is why some researchers say that these people live in a condition of in situ displacement.
- "The 'displacement in situ' refers to processes in which people remain in place, but have their conditions of existence significantly altered, changing their social position, especially their conditions of vulnerability and risk. To this extent, compulsory displacement concerns not the physical movement itself, but the relationships from which people lose access to and control of their conditions of existence and social reproduction, including natural resources, housing, security, and networks of solidarity, trust, and kinship.", according to researchers Raquel Teixeira, Andréa Zhouri and Luana Dias Motta.
Questions:
- How did the Mariana dam collapse affect the local community?
- What are some of the social and psychological effects caused by forced migration?
- What is in situ displacement?

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BBC - Is the world ready for mass migration due to climate change?

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BBC - Is the world ready for mass migration due to climate change?

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- Are political borders fit for the world of the 21st Century?
- Shouldn't we care more about the "planetary borders" defined by geography and climate?
- Who are the people that will be the most affected by climate change?
- How could migration be beneficial in tackling the effects of climate change?
- What are the roles of nation-states and global governance in dealing with mass environmental migration?

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EXAMPLE [translation]Researcher: Global warming by 2 degrees turns billions to refugees

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EXAMPLE [translation]Researcher: Global warming by 2 degrees turns billions to refugees

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-people in the global south lose their livelihoods due to climate change and have to move
-rich countries are not doing enough to mitigate climate change
-The international community should prepare for these developments
QUESTION: Why does climate change generate refugees?
POSSIBLE RESEARCH QUESTION: How does climate change impact livelihoods in XYZ for ABC?