Governing Climate Induced Migration and Displacement

IGO Expansion and Global Policy Implications

Andrea C. Simonelli, Kenneth A. Loparo

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781137538666
• Topic: Politica e relazioni internazionali
• Subtopic: Commercio e tariffe

Andrea Simonelli provides the first in-depth evaluation of climate displacement in the field of political science, specifically global governance. She evaluates four intergovernmental organizations (UNHCR, IOM, OCHA and the UNFCCC), and the structural and political constraints regarding their potential expansion to govern this new issue area.

1

Introduction

Climate change is a topic most often broached by environmental scientists and its effects discussed in terms of animal populations and atmospheric events. The quintessential image accompanying this discussion is the sad-looking polar bear on a lonely iceberg. However, its direct effect on human life is yet to garner such attention. Many do not yet associate the consequences for wildlife with similar consequences for humanity. A changing climate will affect how people are able to use their environment as the locations of arable land and water supplies will shift. In some places, sea level rise and desertification will forcibly displace current human populations. How the world seeks to deal with this shift is yet to be seen. Climate change is also publically discussed in terms of sterile statistics. What tends to be missing is how climate change relates to humanity as a whole. What does a 2 degree Celsius rise in temperature mean in the life of the average person? Can that person conceive of what X tons of carbon in the atmosphere looks like? Without a direct relationship to its effect on humans, these estimates cannot be fully understood. They are vague descriptors at best and useless at worst. Gigatons of invisible gasses cannot be adequately internalized by the minds of most people; it is too abstract. In addition, a rise in temperature effects the whole globe, but with a wide variance across regions, longitudes, and zones of habitation. Thus, how can climate science be connected to the changes seen in individuals’ daily lives? This is a difficult challenge and even more so in countries where climatic effects are less visible. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) provides a source intended to parse out these effects in the Working Group II Assessment Reports “Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability”. Each report contains a “Summary for Policy Makers”, which is an annotated version with more accessible language and summarized results designed for those who are not scientists in the formal sense. Its language describes the risks and changes to the natural environment, but with minimal emphasis on how climate affects humanity. This means that any reader needs to be able to extrapolate in order to further connect how the likelihood of climate trends will affect specific human sectors. The report suggests generalities over regions and time which need to be specified further in order to completely connect the earth’s physical and biological changes to human activity. Science can only estimate the future in general terms.

The Summary proposes some examples of major projected proposed impacts by sector. Table 1.1 presents an annotated version which focuses on climate trends that the IPCC identify and their likelihoods in both the Assessment Reports 4 and 5 (AR4 and AR5) from 2007 and 2013 respectively.

The trends explicated here are long-term changes to typical weather events based on two different time frames: early in this century and on the cusp of the next century. If the latest two Assessment Reports are considered, these trends are either stable or more certain over time. Additionally, the most recent report, AR5, shows that climate science models more strongly predict changes than do previous reports. For example, there are two trends that are described in more specific terms: drought and tropical cyclone activity. Drought had not been adequately projected in terms of changes in soil moisture for early in this century, but is deemed “likely” for late in the century in AR4. However, AR5 adds a generalized descriptor. For cyclones, we see the same low confidence early in the century, but it changes from “likely” to “more likely than not” later and even a specific location where this will be a consideration. This is helpful, in that it can more specifically designate where changes will occur, but again, a purely scientific explanation is still woefully vague. However, Table 1.2 is much more descriptive than Table 1.1. Below is a list of weather-related trends, again, but paired with effects on human health and (separately) industry, settlement, and society from AR4. These descriptions still need to be fitted to individual regions, countries, and localities, but begin to better define the impact of climate trends on human life and livelihoods.

Here, the effects on human health and industry, settlement, and society provide a much broader basis for understanding the impacts of climate trends. These effects vary, but relate to large-scale economic disruptions, personal livelihood issues, infrastructure, vulnerabilities, and potential for migration. Not every locale will be affected by all of these trends, but identifying how an intensification of tropical storms (for example) will affect human habitation is a starting point for an assessment of how to govern and plan for such changes. It is not that climate science is uncertain, but that there is a need to combine the “hard” and “soft” sciences to further develop responses to climate effects. While those scientists who live in a world of computer models and atmospheric statistics can demonstrate how likely a region is to face certain trends, social scientists are needed to determine how vulnerable a location is to large-scale disruption, how resilient is the society/ecosystem to this disruption, and what kinds of adaptation will be needed. Social science researchers interested in the societal and political effects of climate change have to use a literature base that can parallel the types of risks that will slowly occur. Though one cannot study how an increase of temperature or storm surge occurrence will affect people, one can study the effects of high temperatures and storm surge from past events. This link will allow for a connection between scientific data, measures, and models to those who will inevitably experience them. The risks to humanity have begun to be described in terms of coastlines, buildings, and lost tourist revenue (Arifin, 1997; BBC News, 2009; Wright, 2009; Morton, 2009; Reuters, 2009). While these examples are mostly economic, increases in extreme weather events affect human settlements, health, and personal security, among other things. Thus, how climate change will influence humanity is still yet to be a lived reality for most. Scientific projections and probabilities only provide an ambiguous framework under which to begin to plan, prepare, mitigate, and adapt.

Table 1.1 IPCC proposed major climate change impacts

Direction of Climate Trends from Assessment reports 4 and 5
Direction of Trend	Likelihood of further changes: Early 21st Century (AR5)	Likelihood of further changes: Late 21st Century (AR4 and AR5)
Warmer and/or fewer cold days and nights over most land areas	Likely	Virtually certain, Virtually certain
Warmer and/or more frequent hot days and nights over most land areas	Likely	Virtually certain, Virtually certain
Warm spells/heat waves. Frequency increases over most land areas	Not formally assessed	Very Likely, Very Likely
Heavy precipitation events. Frequency increases over most areas	Likely over many land areas	Very Likely, Very Likely
Areas affected by drought increases	Low confidence	Likely, Likely (on a regional to global scale)
Intense tropical cyclone activity increases	Low confidence	Likely, More Likely than Not (in the Western North Pacific and North Atlantic)
Increased incidence of extreme high sea level (excludes tsunamis)	Likely	Likely, Very Likely
Note: For changes in the early 21st century the dates include 2016–2035 and for the late 21st century the dates include the years 2081–2100. Additionally, Virtually Certain refers to a likelihood of outcome greater than 99% probability and Very Likely refers to a likelihood of outcome 90 to 99% probability, and Likely refers to a likelihood of outcome 66 to 90% probability. Finally, there is low confidence related to areas affected by drought increases, because there is low confidence in projected changes in soil moisture specifically.

Table 1.2 IPCC climate effects on humans

Direction of Trend	Human Health	Industry, Settlement, and Society
Over most land areas, warmer and fewer cold days and nights, warmer and more frequent hot days and nights	Reduced human mortality from decreased cold exposure	Reduced energy demand for heating; increased demand for cooling; declining air quality in cities; reduced disruption to transport due to snow, ice; effects on winter tourism
Warm spells/heat waves. Frequency increases over most land areas	Increased risk of heat-related mortality, especially in the elderly, chronically sick, very young, very socially isolated	Reduction in quality of life for people in warm areas without appropriate housing; impacts on the elderly, very young, and the poor
Heavy precipitation events. Frequency increases over most areas	Increased risk of deaths, injuries, and infectious respiratory and skin diseases	Disruption of settlements, commerce, transport, and societies due to flooding; pressures on urban and rural infrastructures; loss of property
Area affected by drought increases	Increased risk of food and water shortage; increased risk of malnutrition; increased risk of water- and food-borne diseases	Water shortages for settlements, industry, and societies; reduced hydropower generation potentials; potential for population migration
Intense tropical cyclone activity increases	Increased risk of deaths, injuries, water- and food-borne diseases; post-traumatic stress disorders	Disruption by flood and harsh winds; withdrawal of risk coverage in vulnerable areas by private insurers, potential for population migrations, loss of property
Increased incidence of extreme high sea level (excludes tsunamis)	Increased risk of death and injuries by drowning in floods and migration-related health effects	Costs of coastal protection versus costs of land-use relocation; potential for movement of populations and infrastructure (also see tropical cyclones above)

Migration as a form of adaptation to climate change needs to be addressed, because the nations with the highest carbon emissions are not doing enough to curb their global impact. Therefore, there is an increasing need to develop a governance structure to tackle the spontaneous and planned climate induced migration and displacement already occurring. A 2009 report by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Australia suggested that only three out of 20 industries are moving fast enough to deliver the transformation to the greener economy needed by 2014 to stay under a 2°C rise in temperature (Clarke, 2009). As of 2015, the goal of a minimum 2°C temperature rise is still elusive. If the global temperature rises beyond 2°C, certain nations currently facing growing climate-related pressures will have no recourse other than to migrate; this will be a sentence of extinction for some. As the pressures of a new Kyoto commitment period loom for the COP 21 in Paris, it is clear that in order to slow the need for migration, t...