“We were trapped in the house for two days until someone came and rescued us in a boat, and we were taken to the local gymnasium which was being used as an evacuation centre. We stayed there for a week but it was so crowded that we decided to leave and go back to the ruins of our house. It proved impossible to live there as well, so we left after another week and spent the next five weeks staying with relatives. I don’t know what the future holds”
RT, 33, Mother of six, Philippines, Mindanao Island

These forces have shaped patterns of migration and displacement in the Philippines. In 2009 nearly 10% of the citizens were living outside the Philippines. This overseas workforce has created a powerful flow of remittances into the Philippines which now accounts for over 11% of GDP. With increasing exposure to disasters at home, this flow of remittances from abroad has provided some financial stability for families affected by disasters. Internal displacement remains a key problem. This displacement has a number of causes including conflict and development projects. Three million people were internally displaced between 2000 – 2009 due to conflict and human rights abuses. But disasters are now the most significant factor driving internal displacement.

“The community totally vanished. Now, only boulders, stones and mud are left there. We never experienced a typhoon of this magnitude.”
Arthur Uy, Govenor of Compostella Valley Island of Mindanao

The Philippines is especially vulnerable to natural hazards such as tropical cyclones (especially in the northern and eastern parts of the country), floods (central Luzon and Southern Mindanao), landslides (due to the terrain of the country), and droughts. Since the 1980s these hazards have become more devastating as cyclones and rainfall have intensified despite the number of rainy days and total annual rainfall decreasing.

“We had heard on the TV that there was a typhoon coming but we didn’t worry as we had never had a typhoon here before, so we didn’t make any preparations. The wind and rain started to get very loud at about four in the morning, then at seven we realised that the stream had turned into a raging torrent and was flooding very fast and coming towards our house. We ran away from the house and escaped to some higher ground, where we found shelter on the top floor of a two-storey house.”
RT, 33, Mother of six, Philippines, Mindanao Island

Over recent years, the population have experienced severe floods, landslides, drought and forest fires. This is having a devastating effect on agriculture, fresh water, coastal and marine resources, health and livelihoods for the poorest communities. These disasters have also created widespread displacement. The vast majority of this movement has been internal, rather than cross border. The connection between tropical storms and climate change remains complex and to some extent unclear. Determining the extent to which climate change has played a role in recent displacements in the Philippines is therefore difficult. Evidence does indicate that number of severe tropical cyclones is higher in warmer years. Future hurricanes may “upstage” recent storms as higher global temperatures lead to more powerful storms. Sea surface temperature is one of the key factors effecting hurricane formation and warmer seas may provide more energy for hurricanes when they form. However there are other major factors currently influencing the frequency and intensity of hurricanes that may not be linked to climate change. Modelling suggests that globally the number of hurricanes may decrease or remain the same, but the intensity and the number of severe storms may increase. However predicting changes to hurricane activity in individual ocean basins is still difficult and uncertain.

Regardless of the connection to climate change, for many hundreds of thousands of people, displacement due to disasters has become a reality. Tropical storm Washi, known in the Philippines as Sendong, hit the coast on 16 December 2011. It killed more than 1,500 people, damaged over 50,000 homes and displaced some 430,900 people. The greatest impact was felt in and around the cities of Cagayan de Oro where over half the population (461,877) was displaced and Iligan where approximately one third of the population (285,061) was displaced.

Just a year later another devastating storm hit the Phillipines. Cyclone Bopha killed several hundred people, displaced in the region of 200,000 and destroyed some 28,000 homes.

The testimonies in this post were collected by Reuters / AlertNet 

Images: IFCR

“Migration has now become an inevitable method of adaptation for us … As a means of survival for us and our animals, we are forced to continuously migrate despite all the risks involved. This is our form of adaptation. We have always mastered it, but if nothing is done to ensure the safety of our space and activities, we risk, one day, being forced to abandon our way of life and join the swelling ranks of the unemployed in the city.”

Hindu Oumarou Ibrahim, Peul Mbororo of Chad

Worsening environmental conditions in the Sahel have had a number of impacts on mobility. Historically, droughts have triggered massive displacement. The long drought of the “desiccation of the Sahel” that took place during the 70’s and 80’s created a large scale movement of people. This was primarily internal rather than cross border, and generally from the North to South of countries. It also created extensive rural to urban migration within countries. Where cross border movement did happen it tended to be from the landlocked Sahelian countries to the coastal countries.

However the connection between climate change and drought are not simple. The connections between drought and human movement is not simple either. Drought is often the result of natural variations in weather, however these variations are dangerously intensified by climate change. So while it is impossible to state that climate change caused a particular drought, it also not the case that climate change has no effect. The current understanding is that drought – including in the Sahel – is made more likely by human induced climate change.

“I crossed the border with my animals, my donkeys, my children and my wife. I traveled to Timbuktu crossed the river and came down to Burkina. I walked every day until sunet and after I would go to bed. The journey took three months. “ 

Malian man, in Burkina Faso

Further, the effect of drought on movement not simple. Moving usually requires financial resources and as income from farming falls, households have less money with which to move. During the severe drought in the Sahel region during 83-85 there was widespread displacement. However in Mali mobility actually decreased. Households did not have the resources to move, and so stayed where they were inspite of worsening conditions. This is an example of how a changing environment can in fact lead to less mobility, trapping vulnerable people in high-risk areas.

Encroaching deserts are threatening much of Africa’s arable land, if trends continue two thirds of arable land could be lost by 2025. The Sahel is particularly vulnerable to encroaching desert, this combined with drought and more perennial water scarcity is threatening livelihoods, the UNFP estimates the the 2011 sahel drought left 11m people without enough to eat. The 2012 current food crisis impacted on 18m people and left 1m children malnourished. This year the UN is again calling for $1.6 bn in humanitarian aid (the same figure as 2012) as 10.3 m face the risk of going hungry in 2013. This warning comes whilst the region is still in the grips of hunger.

The testimonies in this article are taken from the IOM’s International Dialogue on Migration, Climate Change, Environmental Degradation and Migration and the Refugees International video Sahel: Malian Refugees and Hosts Hit Hard by Crises

“If we relocate during the summer, we’d need a lot of barges to move everything …The thought of moving our village is very sad because Shishmaref is the place where I grew up. Shishmaref is a great place to live because everyone knows each other. If we move, it would probably bring our community closer together. It could be totally opposite though because some people might just move to a new place. If we move, it won’t be the same because it wouldn’t be the Shishmaref that everyone knows.”
Allison “Anisaaluk” Nayokpuk, Shismaref, Alaska

“About five years ago the sea ice used to take longer to melt. It lasted about 10 months but now it’s only 8 months. This harms our way of life, our way of hunting, our way of fishing, and our way of traveling from one place to another.”
Charlie Nakqashuk, Pangnirtung, Nunavut

Like many nomadic people, indigenous groups in the arctic have used mobility as a way of adapting to changing circumstances. Climate change must therefore be seen as one factor among many which changes the patterns of movement among indigenous Arctic peoples.

Over the last half century there has been a general decrease in the mobility of indigenous Arctic people. One cause of this has been the desire of central governments to provide services such as health and education, which, the governments have argued, required nomadic people to settle into small town and villages. This sedenterization has not always been voluntary and there are examples of forced settlement from across the Arctic region, especially in the Russian far north. Forced movement as well as settlement has also taken place. The primary example being Canada’s resettlement of many Arctic people to the far North of the country. Many claim this was politically motivated and was a way of the Canadian government reasserting sovereignty over the area at the high of the Cold War. Another major trend has been the out-migration of young people in search of work and education in other locations.

Therefore changes in mobility linked to climate change must be seen in the context of these other significant factors. None-the-less climate change has recently become an important and emerging force shaping the movement of people in the Arctic region. Climate change has impacted the mobility of indigenous Arctic peoples in a number of ways. Changes in habitat caused by climate change are altering the way in which people forage and hunt. Changing weather patterns are also changing the usual range of herd animals, forcing people to move with them in order continue hunting. With thinner winter ice, crossing rivers and lakes becomes harder or impossible. Traditional routes of movement for mobile hunters are therefore changing or disappearing.

Many Arctic communities depend on barges for their supplies. Increased numbers of storms and the melting of a layer of protective sea ice has caused many barge landing sites to become unusable due to erosion. In a number of cases this has forced people to find new barge sites. However, in one notable case the disappearance of barge sites and other coastal erosion has left the village of Newtok facing relocation.

Climate change may also result in new industry and actively in Arctic regions, which will have implications for the movement of people. As ice thins and melts new opportunities for fossil fuel extraction and mining emerge. This could mean that Arctic people move in order to find work in these new operations, and that people from other areas will increasingly move into the Arctic. However it is unclear what impact these new operations will have on the culture, health and well-being of indigenous people. As a statement from the Indigenous Peoples Global Summit on Climate Change put it “any economic advantage that might trickle down to the Inuit cannot compensate for the hugely negative effects of climate change on their health and well-being”.

Further, the fact that the melting Arctic has created the opportunity for more fossil fuel extraction is deeply and tragically ironic.

“On Thursday 31 January, we will bring together a panel from across the development landscape to answer the following questions: how well has the development community responded to the need to factor in migration? How can current achievements be enhanced and what lessons can be learnt from both the successes and failures to date? In addition, how should migration feature in post-2015 development goals?”

Other panelists include:

• Dr. Blessing Mberu, research scientist, African Population and Health Research Center, Nairobi, Kenya
• Bart W. Édes, director, poverty reduction, gender, and social development division, Asian Development Bank, Manila, Philippines
• Pablo Escribano, communications assistant, ACP Observatory on Migration, Brussels, Belgium
• Haseeb Irfanullah, team leader, Practical Action, Dhaka, Bangladesh
• Harrison Carter, director of policy and advocacy, MedsinUK

“At COP18, climate-induced migration was not a major point on the official agendas of the various negotiating tracks, however one side event on December 3rd, 2012 chose to focus on this issue in depth. Sponsored by the International Organization for Migration (IOM), the event highlighted recent research on climate-induced migration and discussed possible strategies to confront the challenges it imposes.”

The Many Faces of Climate Displacement, Refugees International blog

Alice Thomas of Refugees International writes … “As manager of the Bacon Center for the Study of Climate Displacement at Refugees International, I had come to Mali to assess the needs of hundreds of thousands of Malians, who were facing not only extreme weather, but a deadly combination of weather and war. “

Call For Papers: Special Issue of Refuge on environmentally induced displacement.

This special issue will explore the phenomenon of environmentally induced displacement (EID).  From climate change to extractive industries, from ‘natural’ disasters to increased urbanization, from conservation to mega-projects, landscapes and peoples’ place on them are being transformed at an unprecedented scale across the globe.

Event: 30th January. Arctic Indigenous Peoples, Displacement, and Climate Change: Tracing the Connections.

“For thousands of years, Arctic peoples have migrated in response to changing environmental conditions. But today climate change is putting unprecedented pressure on those indigenous communities.”

“On January 30, the Brookings-LSE Project on Internal Displacement will explore the relationship between climate change and population movements in the Arctic through three recent case studies.”

Poet and journalist Musa Okwonga performs the Migrant Manifesto.

• Migration – seasonal, temporal, and permanent – plays an important part in many families’ struggle to deal with rainfall variability and food & livelihood insecurity;
• Migration was found to have increased in recent decades in a number of the research sites;
• Households with more diverse assets and access to a variety of adaptation, livelihood diversification, or risk management options can use migration in ways that enhance resilience;
• Almost entirely within national borders;
• Predominantly male, but with growing participation by women in a number of countries (with India as the exception where entire nuclear families moved together);
• Seasonal, temporal or permanent migration patterns;
• Largely by individual household members (except in the India research site);
• Largely driven by livelihood-related needs (household income) in most countries, but with a growing number of migrants seeking improved skill sets (e.g. through education) in countries like Thailand, Vietnam and Peru;
• A mix of rural-rural and rural-urban, with more productive agricultural areas (Ghana, Bangladesh, Tanzania), nearby urban centers (Peru, India),

The Foundation for International Environmental Law and Development has produced a short report of the areas of the talks that look at migration and displacement and the potential they hold for creating more support or legal protection for people at risk.

The most significant advance at the negotiations was two years ago when the talks took place in Cancun. The statement agreed “invites all parties” to consider

“Measures to enhance understanding, coordination and cooperation with regard to climate change induced displacement, migration and planned relocation, where appropriate, at the national, regional and international levels”.

Although this might seem like tiny piece of text it is actually very important. It indicates a first step towards considering displacement and migration within the UN’s climate negotiations. The paragraph could either be strengthened or diluted at Doha over the next couple of weeks.

The negotiations also contain a stream of talks focusing on “loss and damage”. This essentially means the ways in which countries might deal with the effects of increasingly severe and frequent natural disasters. Negotiations around loss and damage recognise that while adaptation might allow some areas to change and accommodate some of the effects of climate change, many areas will be facing sudden shocks that will create widespread loss of life, injury and damage to property and infrastructure. These disasters may also have migration and displacement consequences. In previous rounds of talks island states and Least Developed Countries have made proposals that would help them cope with the loss and damage associated with disasters. Their proposals included insurance and compensation to help with the financial costs of “rehabilitation” of areas damaged by disasters. The insurance and compensation could have helped these countries support groups of people forced to move by disasters. However the proposals were rejected.

Negotiations on loss and damage are handled by a working group at the UN negotiations called the Subsidiary Body on Implementation (SBI). This year in Doha the SBI is considering new proposals on loss and damage and there is the possibility that something more positive could emerge.

As the Field report concludes:

The question now is: will climate displacement and migration finally be fully and bravely addressed in UNFCCC negotiations? Or is the future of climate exiles best determined through bilateral and regional agreements? It is clear that attention has been building with regard to this situation, but more action and international commitment is needed for more concrete steps towards dealing with the individuals vulnerable to climate displacement and migration, who ultimately face a rather bleak and uncertain future without sufficient legal safeguards to protect their rights or interests.

Human Rights Day and International Migrants Day
Climate Change, Migration and Communities in Redbridge and East London
Wednesday 12th December 2012, 10am-12.00noon
Redbridge Town Hall, 128-142 High Road, Ilford, IG1 1DD

Temporary displacement as a result of natural disastors is predicted as an increasing challenge for migration. Whilst most of the migration from such incidences will be localised to neighbouring countries, this short session looks at the main challenges faced by law makers and what diaspora communities from areas like Asian and the African sub regions, and who are based in the UK can do to advocate and support in times of need.

Guest Speakers
Alex Randall from the Climate Change & Migration Coalition “The Nature of the Challenge”
Mohammad Hoshi, “What’s needed to support a change in the legislative framework for asylum?”
Rita Chadha, “What can diaspora communities do to help?”

The report analyses the complex causes of forced migration and its consequences and impacts on displaced populations, their hosts and humanitarian actors. It looks at the significant gaps in humanitarian protection for ever-increasing numbers of forced migrants who do not fit into conventional categories of protection, and the public health challenges caused by forced displacement, particularly for women, children and those with mental ill-health problems. It examines the ‘urbanization’ of forced migration, the role of climate change and environmental factors in forced displacement and how new communications, information and social networking technologies are reshaping the links between aid providers and migrants. It also tracks humanitarian funding for forcibly displaced populations, as well as the positive and negative economic impacts they have on host communities and countries.”