migration and slow- onset events desertification and sea-level rise
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Migration and Slow- onset Events Desertification and sea-level rise. Environment & Migration. Migration, droughts and desertification. A relationship difficult to grasp. Mix of different migration drivers Droughts tend to aggravate other problems - PowerPoint PPT PresentationTRANSCRIPT
Migration and Slow-onset EventsDesertification and sea-level rise
Environment & Migration
Migration, droughts and desertification
A relationship difficult to grasp
Mix of different migration drivers Droughts tend to aggravate other problems Droughts as political events?
Effects on migration difficult to forecast Very slow-onset Migration can decrease at the peak of the drought Environmental drivers are mixed with other socio-
economic drivers
Two trends in the literature Push factors
Aims to assess the weight of environmental drivers on migration
Tend to be neo-Malthusian and overly deterministic Environmental changes do not affect all people the same
way, and people does not respond the same way either.
Multi-level contextual drivers Considers the complex interplay between different
factors at the micro-level Resort to traditional migration models, such as the New
Economics of Migration Migration as a risk-reduction strategy
The importance of socio-economic factors Droughts are often the result of socio-
economic conditions Distributional issues
Seasonal migration determined by the seasons and the labour market
Temporary migration towards urban centres Households that do not receive remittances
are also those who are the most vulnerable to environmental degradation And these vulnerable households are also those
that are the least able to migrate.
Mobility as a coping strategy Mobility is a coping strategy for people living
in fragile environments Reduction of dependance to environmental
resources Diversification of income
Migration as an adaptation failure or an adaptation strategy?
Migration related to slow-onset events tend to be little acknowledged, and hence litte understood and addressed.
Migration to fight desertification:The case of Inner Mongolia Desertification
China losing 4,000 square kilometers per year Dust and sand storms affecting Beijing, Japan and
North Korea Air pollution Reforestation programmes not very successful
Overgrazing on grasslands Chinese authorities accuse Mongolian pastoralists
of being responsible for desertification problems.
Migration patterns Important in-migration flows of Han
Chinese Mongol pastoralists moving to towns and
cities ‘Environmental Migration’ programme
Resettlement of pastoralists in villages Double objective: environmental relief and
poverty alleviation Political objective as well? Small compensations offered to migrants Grasslands closed for 5-10 years Programme aimed at relocating 650,000
pastoralists in the period 2001-2007
Sea-level rise
Islands as laboratories
Exotic islands have often been assimilated to intact, non-perverted spaces
Isolated from time and space Fit to reproduce laboratory conditions Providing simple models for the study of more complex
societies(that is, Western
societies)
1928
1874
Islands as places of vulnerability Used to be vulnerable to capitalism because of their lack
of resources and weak economic potential. Now vulnerable to climate change because of their small
size and low elevation. Also assimilated to places where men are vulnerable.
1719
But what does vulnerability mean? Island populations are known for being remarkably
resilient (Barnett 2001, Barnett & Connell 2010) Vulnerability tends to be a Western discourse, unable to
account for empirical realities (Bankoff 2001) No agreement on what vulnerability means in
international negotiations
Article 4.8 of UNFCCC acknowledges a particular vulnerability for: Small-island countries Countries with low-lying coastal
areas Countries with arid and semi-arid
areas, or forested areas Countries with areas prone to natural
disasters Countries with areas liable to
drought and desertification Countries with areas of high urban
atmospheric pollution Countries with areas with fragile
ecosystems Countries whose economies are
highly dependent on fossile fuels Land-locked and transit countries
Small island states as laboratories of climate change
Islands are viewed as the incarnation of the impacts of climate change
Islanders as the first witnesses (and the first victims) of climate change
This representation has increasingly been used by SIDS governments make their voices heard in the negotiations
Islands seem to matter only because they disappear
17 October 2009
In Copenhagen, they had forgotten to put the small islands on the giant globe that was in the middle of the conference hall.
Canaries in the coalmine Canaries were used in coalmines to alert miners about
the presence of toxic gases. Likewise, ‘refugees’ from small islands are supposed to
alert us about the dangers of climate change. Deterministic perspective: migration presented as
unavoidable.
Some well-intentioned reactions in Australia
Though well-intentioned, this rhetoric is deeply self-centred:
« Look at them to see what’s going to happen to us »
In the coalmine, canaries were never saved
‘Climate refugees’ are the living proof that climate change is happening
Empirical realities Migrants from island countries move for a variety of
reasons (Mortreux and Barnett 2008) And they certainly do not consider themselves as
disempowered victims (Gemenne 2011) A deterministic perspective fails to capture the complex
realities of migration process
Political responses and their misperception
In Maldives, the Safe Island policy
Migration agreements between Tuvalu and New Zealand
Safe Island Policy
Hulhumale
Migration agreements between New Zealand and Tuvalu
Pacific Access Category For 650 residents of Fiji, Tuvalu, Kiribati and Tonga Tuvalu has an annual quota of 75
Seasonal labour migration Family reunification
There are currently about 3,000 Tuvaluans living in New Zealand
Pitfalls of the canaries rhetoric• Relativist trap (Connell 2003) – can become
consubstantial of islanders’ identity• Might disempower migrants and islanders
Lessening their adaptive capacity• Neglects the possibilities of local adaptation
Current adaptation strategies might get discredited if the country appears doomed