"We Need to Respond"
Interview with CARE Climate Change Coordinator Charles Ehrhart
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The messages for policymakers are related to three things: preventing, reducing and managing migration and displacement. The policy decisions that are being discussed here in Bonn must aim to prevent dangerous climate change.In other words, we need to avoid triggering the kinds of conditions that are going to force people to move. That needs to be a priority.
Second, we have to reduce migration. We need to acknowledge that the international community has, unfortunately, procrastinated making meaningful emissions reductions cuts for so long that a degree of dangerous climate change is unavoidable. With that in mind, we clearly need to provide people with support for adaptation. We hope that this report will contribute to policymakers' understanding of their responsibility to provide sufficient and appropriate resources to the world's most vulnerable populations so that they can adapt to a changing environment.In other words: so that these individuals, families and communities won't be forced to move.
The third message is about managing migration. Empirical research tells us that environmental change is already inducing migration displacement. We need to come up with an appropriate management response at international and national levels. This includes dealing with organizational frameworks and legal norms to ensure that people forced to migrate can do so in safety and with dignity.
What impact will this report have on the climate change negotiations in Bonn?
We anticipate two things. First, we expect to raise the awareness of policymakers and other stakeholders about the needs of an especially vulnerable population – that is, people forced to flee their homes and give up their livelihoods as a result of climate change. Second, we expect to increase policymakers' understanding. For almost a decade, we have been aware of the phenomenon of environmentally induced migration and displacement. A number of terms have been coined so far. However, many of those terms are imprecise. They are problematic from a legal point of view. So, while an increasing number of people are aware of this environmentally induced migration, they don't have a sophisticated understanding of it. We believe that this report will make substantial contribution towards policymakers' understanding of the issues. And from the feedback we have gotten on our report, we have clearly achieved this.
But we have another hope. Right now in Bonn, parties to the UNFCCC are negotiating the text that they will use for negotiations in Copenhagen this coming December. CARE has been working on with others to introduce appropriate draft text for these negotiations, including about environmentally induced migrants. It now looks very likely that our recommended text will be included. Which is very encouraging, but of course this is just a first step. We have to make sure that this text stays in the final agreement in December. I hope our report will increase governments' commitment to providing sufficient resources for adaptation and ensuring that it reaches the poorest people who need it most.
What is your desired outcome in Bonn and at Copenhagen?
We want a negotiation text that really reflects the need of especially vulnerable populations, including environmentally induced migrants. At Copenhagen, we want a final agreement that is fair and also one that is faithful to the science. One of our biggest concerns is that negotiations about emissions reductions targets are not going well. To put it bluntly, governments are not talking about making the kinds of cuts they must in order to avoid dangerous climate change.
You say in the report that the scale and scope of climate change induced migration could exceed anything that has occurred before. Who and which regions will be particularly affected by it?
There will be some regions where populations will be under great environmental stresses and strains. For instance, much of Central America will experience significant drying out. However, while there will be substantial strain within that region as a whole it is not going to affect everybody the same. Within that region, you will always have some places where the impacts of climate change will be less severe. As the need to occupy safer places accentuate, we will probably see people with more resources taking control and pushing poorer people into marginal, high-risk landscapes. Some of the other hot spots, besides Central America, are going to include the Sahel as well as southern and southwestern Africa, with regards to drying out. And there will be populations displaced as a result of glacier melt in Asia. In all of these places, there is going to be mounting incentives for people to migrate. We will frequently see the greatest pressure on some of the poorest people.
Is climate change induced migration already happening or is it a projection for the future?
The report is based on research done through EACH-FOR, a large-scale social research project supported by funding from the EU. Interviews were conducted in five continents with more than 2,000 households. Researchers found that some families are already on the move due to the negative impacts of climate change. We see a clear signal that climate change is already contributing to people's decisions to move. And we know that this is likely to increase.
If people migrate, where do they go?
Most people on the move are poor. And poor people lack resources to go far. They move within their own countries. Some will move within the region, to neighboring countries. And a relatively small proportion will move between continents, say from Central America to North America or from Africa to Europe. The general migration pattern that we are going to see is rural to urban migration. People are going to move from failing farms to urban areas in search, for instance, of livelihoods that are not based on rain-fed agriculture.
What implications will this have for areas that are densely populated already?
Megacities are growing in a number of parts of the world. Many municipal authorities are already overwhelmed and unable to provide basic services to the urban population. So, people migrating into the cities are trying to tap into already meagre social services such as water, education or health – and it's going to be more and more difficult for municipalities to maintain basic services.
Will Europe or the United States have to prepare for climate change induced migrants in the near future?
Already, people are migrating to places like the United States and Europe for whom climate change is playing part in their decision. I don't think that there will be a wave of migrants flowing into the United States or Europe. People's access to financial resources determines and limits how far they can move. Even if we are looking at extremely large numbers of people that will be on the move due to climate change, very few of them will have the money required to make it to the United States or Europe. I think that the major thing that northern countries need to do is help people adapt to environmental change where they live.
What does that mean for the work of CARE? How do you prepare to help people on the move?
CARE needs to, first and foremost, concentrate on helping people build more resilient livelihoods and reduce disaster risks so that migration is a choice, not a necessity. The worst-case scenario is that people are forced to move after their entire asset base has been eroded. The other thing that we can do in terms of preparation is to understand that despite best efforts, we still will see a growing number of people on the move. I think that humanitarian organizations are obliged to factor that into their strategic plans and figure out how to support those people.
Can you give some concrete examples?
There are two forms of migration: short-term and long-term. The former is often triggered by disasters, such as hurricanes, floods and droughts. We can reduce short-term migration by helping communities implement disaster risk reduction and management activities. With regards to long-term migration, the biggest push factor is going to be the degradation of people's livelihoods. We can help by assisting pastoralists to switch their herds to animals that can deal better with drought; or farmers to sow crops that are more resilient to increasingly unpredictable weather.
Charles, you have lived in Africa for many years. You travel around the world frequently. So, you get to listen to many people. How do they experience climate change, and how do they cope with a changing environment?
One of the most touching conversations I have had was in Vietnam. I visited a community that had been devastated by a cyclone four years earlier. They told me that the community was not prepared because this cyclone was out of season, it was outside normal cyclone tracks and it was much stronger than average. The people had been hit by two cyclones in about 10 years, and they felt that this was a clear indicator of climate change. And then they showed me their fields. I saw maize and some rice plants. However, the maize was stunted and it was not producing any corn that people could eat. The reason: The cyclone had brought seawater into the fields and salted the soil. People were just growing the maize in order to feed it to the pigs. This storm surge affected agricultural production; not just for one season but in fact for a numbers of years until the salt is finally flushed out of the system through rain.
And I wondered: Why weren't there any men around? The women told me they did not only loose their income due to the cyclones – but their husbands, too. They had to migrate in search of work. These women were sad and missing their husbands who were frequently away for months at a time.
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