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