Migration and Slow- onset Events Desertification and sea-level rise

1. Migration and Slow-onset EventsDesertification and sea-levelrise Environment & Migration

2. Migration, droughts and desertification A relationshipdifficult to grasp

3. Mix of different migration drivers • Droughts tend to aggravateotherproblems • Droughts as politicalevents? • Effects on migration difficult to forecast • Veryslow-onset • Migration candecreaseat the peak of the drought • Environmental drivers are mixed withothersocio-economic drivers

4. Two trends in the literature • Push factors • Aims to assess the weight of environmental drivers on migration • Tend to beneo-Malthusian and overlydeterministic • Environmental changes do not affect all people the sameway, and people does not respond the samewayeither. • Multi-levelcontextual drivers • Considers the complexinterplaybetweendifferentfactorsat the micro-level • Resort to traditional migration models, such as the New Economics of Migration • Migration as a risk-reductionstrategy

5. The importance of socio-economicfactors • Droughts are often the result of socio-economic conditions • Distributional issues • Seasonal migration determined by the seasons and the labour market • Temporary migration towardsurban centres • Householdsthat do not receiveremittances are alsothosewho are the mostvulnerable to environmentaldegradation • And thesevulnerablehouseholds are alsothosethat are the least able to migrate.

6. Mobility as a copingstrategy • Mobilityis a copingstrategy for people living in fragile environments • Reduction of dependance to environmentalresources • Diversification of income • Migration as an adaptation failure or an adaptation strategy? • Migration related to slow-onsetevents tend to belittleacknowledged, and hencelitteunderstood and addressed.

7. Migration to fightdesertification:The case of InnerMongolia • Desertification • China losing 4,000 square kilometers per year • Dust and sandstormsaffecting Beijing, Japan and NorthKorea • Air pollution • Reforestation programmes not verysuccessful • Overgrazing on grasslands • Chineseauthorities accuse Mongolianpastoralists of beingresponsible for desertificationproblems.

9. 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

11. Sea-levelrise Islands as laboratories

12. Exoticislands 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 complexsocieties (thatis, Western societies)

13. 1928

14. 1874

16. 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.

17. 1719

19. But whatdoesvulnerabilitymean? • 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

20. 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

21. Small island states as laboratories of climate change

22. 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 governmentsmaketheirvoicesheard in the negotiations Islandsseem to matteronlybecausetheydisappear

23. 17 October 2009

24. In Copenhagen, they had forgotten to put the small islands on the giant globe that was in the middle of the conference hall.

25. 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.

26. Some well-intentioned reactions in Australia

27. Thoughwell-intentioned, thisrhetoricisdeeply self-centred: • « Look atthem to seewhat’s going to happen to us » • In the coalmine, canaries wereneversaved • ‘Climaterefugees’ are the living proof thatclimate change is happening

28. 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

29. Politicalresponses and theirmisperception • In Maldives, the Safe Island policy • Migration agreements between Tuvalu and New Zealand

30. Safe Island Policy Hulhumale

31. Migration agreementsbetweenNew 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

33. Pitfalls of the canaries rhetoric • Relativisttrap(Connell 2003) – canbecomeconsubstantial of islanders’ identity • Mightdisempower migrants and islanders Lesseningtheir adaptive capacity • Neglects the possibilities of local adaptation Current adaptation strategies might get discredited if the country appears doomed