Poor people displaced by climate change will compete for dangerous jobs and slum housing in already crowded areas, experts warn
CANCUN, Mexico (AlertNet) – Bangladesh, already four times more crowded than neighbouring India, could lose 20 percent of its land to sea level rise over the next 90 years, displacing 20 to 25 million people, scientists predict.
Most of the newly landless will try to squeeze into adjoining districts, potentially setting off conflicts with existing residents, Bangladesh's foreign secretary said at U.N. climate negotiations in Mexico this week. Others will struggle to find space in already teeming cities, taking the most perilous jobs and the poorest housing, or may eventually have to cross into nearby nations.
For nearly all those forced from their homes, moving will "mean losing their livelihoods, their resources, their access to healthcare and education and the rest", Mohamed Mijarul Quayes warned. That translates into "the disempowerment of these 25 million people over...generations", as well as a growing burden on their new neighbours.
Climate-related migration, already on the rise, is expected to surge in coming years as worsening storms, floods, droughts, sea-level rise and environmental degradation make parts of the world too tough to live in or simply uninhabitable, migration analysts said at the Cancun talks.
"Climate change is presenting us all with a challenge of unprecedented proportions," said William Lacy Swing, director general of the International Organization for Migration. "It is clearly going to be a major element in the decades to come in terms of population movement."
RESETTLEMENT UNPOPULAR
The expected increase in migration threatens to bring with it a host of problems – greater poverty, educational disruption, conflicts over land and other resources, border disputes and potential loss of cultures if island nations lose their homelands to rising seas, experts said.
"Human history is a history of migration," said Ahsan Uddin Ahmed, executive director of the Centre for Global Change in Bangladesh. But "what we are faced with today is a different proposition altogether".
In many parts of the world, the pressures are already becoming clear. In Tuvalu, a low-lying Pacific Island considered at risk from higher seas, the country's prime minister was recently voted out of office after he started work on a policy aimed at eventually moving islanders elsewhere.
In much of the Pacific, "people are resisting this notion of resettlement", said Peter Emberson of the Pacific Conference of Churches, which works with 14 island nations in the region. "It's political suicide for politicians to begin to advocate it."
The resistance to moving "is not borne out of stubborn denial of what climate change really is", he said. Instead, it arises from a deep-seated fear about loss of identity.
WELFARE COSTS RISING
In Bangladesh, the capital Dhaka - already home to a staggering 27,500 people per square kilometre – is attracting ever-growing numbers of families displaced by erosion, storm damage to protective embankments and fields ruined by salt intrusion.
With many unable to find jobs, the government has been forced to boost welfare spending over the last seven or eight years from half a billion dollars annually to $4 billion, Ahmed said, pulling money away from development efforts.
The migrants themselves face huge problems. Many, lacking savings and social ties, find themselves hardly better off than they had been back home. And if they do find jobs, they often end up with dangerous work local people don't want to do, according to Dorothy Grace Guerrero, a researcher with Focus on the Global South, a development policy group.
Many have little option but to move into the worst slums, with little access to education for their children or healthcare.
"When we talk of loss of home, people forcibly removed and displaced, we talk not only about them losing their houses," Guerrero said.
Migration to urban areas – long a natural pattern - is likely to be especially problematic in coming years in countries like China, Vietnam and Bangladesh, where major cities themselves are threatened by climate change impacts, including worsening coastal storms, sea-level rise and flooding, said Daniel Schensul, who works on climate issues for the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).
These hazards could lead to the most vulnerable families – who often settle in flood-prone areas – being displaced over and over.
BETTER DATA NEEDED
A big problem in preparing for the upcoming changes, he said, is that most parts of the world lack even basic data about existing migration patterns, particularly within countries.
Most climate-related migration is expected to happen inside national borders, and to follow existing migratory routes, particularly toward cities. But the potential impacts of sudden disasters such as storms and floods versus slow-onset disasters like worsening drought are still poorly understood.
"We need better basic numbers," said Jose Miguel Guzman, UNFPA's head of population and development.
Countries can help potential migrants prepare by providing training and education to help them find different jobs and compete more successfully for work in their new surroundings, experts said.
Changes to national and international laws will also be needed to accommodate expanding flows of migrants – something that promises to be hugely political sensitive, researchers warned.
"Migration is as old as time, but over time the borders will be thicker and the gates will not open as they do now," warned Emberson, a Fijian.
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