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Legal Issues of Climate Change-Induced Migrants in China. DENG Haifeng Tsinghua University, Law School denghf@tsinghua.edu.cn. Index:. 1. General introduction about current situation on climate change-induced migrants in China
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Legal Issues of Climate Change-Induced Migrants in China DENG Haifeng Tsinghua University, Law School denghf@tsinghua.edu.cn
Index: • 1. General introduction about current situation on climate change-induced migrants in China • 2.The legal obstacles which the migrants are facing through two cases • 3. The legal countermeasures of removing such obstacles.
INTRODUCTION • China suffers the heaviest natural disasters in the world. The natural disaster risk that China faced is increasing, and there will be a large number of climate change-induced migrants in China in the future. • Definition of climate change-induced migrants: Those personnel who spontaneously or be forced to migrate temporarily or permanently from their hometown to other regions of their own countries or other foreign countries under the influence of relative climate policies or climate-related projects mainly because of negative impacts on their survival or living conditions brought about by sudden or gradual environmental changes due to climate change.
Climate Change-Induced Migrants in China • Three areas: • Upper reaches of the Yangtze River and Yellow River——land degradation in this area may lead local residents to migrate to the Tibetan Plateau and the eastern coastal regions. • West and northwest China——drought and desertification may lead to migration of the local farmers. • Southeast coastal area——frequent typhoons and floods may drive local residents to migrate northward. • How to remove the obstacles that migrants are faced with and help them to settle down has become an unavoidable issue for China. Lacking of legislation contributes to many legal barriers during the migration of climate change-induced migrants.
The legal obstacles can be reflected through two cases Tuanjie Village is a typical immigrant village which located in the central arid zone of Ningxia. As of the end of 2010, there were 8313 climate change-induced migrants from neighboring counties in Tuanjie Village.
The legal obstacles can be reflected through two casesKaiyuan is a city of only 30 million people in Yunnan Province, it has accepted thousands of climate change-induced migrants and settled them in different towns and villages. Children of climate change-induced migrants without residence registration are unable to acquire the right to receive education
Two Cases of Climate Change-Induced Migrants • Problems encountered by the climate change-induced migrants of Tuanjie village and Kaiyuan city • It’s extremely hard for climate change-induced migrants to obtain residence registrations in resettlement areas. • China’s household registration system deprives the possibility of obtaining residence registrations in resettlement areas for climate change-induced migrants. Because all the public services and welfare are binding with the system, migrants who migrate spontaneously are unable to obtain corresponding rights and interests on land and equal rights of political, democratic, health care, education and employment in the resettlement areas.
Two Cases of Climate Change-Induced Migrants • climate change-induced migrants are unable to fully enjoy the rights and interests on land. • Land in the rural area is owned by collective economic organizations in China, the fundamental requirement of obtaining the right to use house sites and the rights to the farm land for migrants is being members of the collectives which they move into. If they could not be the members, • on the one hand, migrants are unable to obtain the lands both for house sites and farming. On the other hand, they can’t transfer their rights on land in their original residence into their resettlement areas smoothly.
Two Cases of Climate Change-Induced Migrants • Religious Conflicts between migrants and local residents. • climate change-induced migrants will encounter the obstacles on religious beliefs during integration into their resettlement areas. • For instance, though climate change-induced migrants of Tuanjie village are all Hui Muslims, they believe in 2 Islam denominations, they want to build their own mosques. There were more than 20 mosques in Tuanjie village. All the mosques hold religious activities individually, this situation leads to waste of resources and Conflicts between immigrants.
Religious activities of Hui Muslims Mosques of Tuanjie Village
Legal Countermeasures of removing obstacles that migrants are faced with • 1.Reforming current household registration system • A unified urban and rural household registration system should be built, and the social security system should be improved. • Establishing a unified identity system • To solve the problems of obtaining residence registrations in resettlement areas, a unified identity system should be established. All the citizens shouldn’t be divided into “urban accounts” or “rural accounts”. Once conditions get mature, China should abolish current household registration system and set up a system of urban residence certificate which has both fairness and flexibility.
Legal Countermeasures of removing obstacles that migrants are faced with • Improving current social security system • Urban pension system should cover migrants move from countryside to cities, so China should establish a national co-ordinating pension fund to solve urban residents’ pension problems. At the same time, migrants who exit from the rural social security system should be accepted by the urban social security system. In correspondence with this, migrants who move from urban areas to rural areas should be accepted by the rural social security system.
Legal Countermeasures of removing obstacles that migrants are faced with • 2.Protecting migrants’ rights and interests on land • Specifying the standard of substitution of the right to the farming land and circulation of house sites under certain conditions. • Firstly, the department for land administration can set up a national database to classify land into different categories according to different functions, and then reclassify similar kind of land according to differential values. Based on data of this database, government can calculate the standard of substitution of cultivated land and confer the interests in land to climate change-induced migrants. Which could balance the conflictions between the migrants and the original member of the resettlement areas.
Legal Countermeasures of removing obstacles that migrants are faced with • Secondly, the legislature should amend the articles of “Land Administration Law” which limit circulation of house sites, and provide a legal basis for circulation of house sites. Then a nationwide land-use rights circulation market should be established, thus land-use quotas can be circulated as a kind of property right. The land-use rights circulation market can get rid of legal barriers on interchange between urban and rural land, realize the inter-regional interchange of urban housing land-use quotas and the right to use house sites, promote the deconstruction of dual structure of town & country in China.
Legal Countermeasures of removing obstacles that migrants are faced with • Reforming the religious legal system • Strengthening the protection of freedom of religious belief. • Firstly, government should protect normal religious activities effectively according to law. Normal religious activities include holding religious ceremonies, publication of religious books, religious endowments and selling religious articles and so on. • Secondly, the right to conduct normal religious educational activities of professional religious personnel should be protected. Professional religious personnel refer to those personnel who have been recognized and recorded by lawfully registered religious organizations, and have been put on record by state bureau of religious affairs.
Legal Countermeasures of removing obstacles that migrants are faced with • Adding liability provisions on protection of freedom of religious belief. • China has no liability provision on violations of freedom of religious belief. Criminal Law merely has a provision on public servant of state organs who illegally deprive citizens’ right to religious beliefs, there is no specific provision on the same infringement acts of other social organizations and individuals. People who infringe upon other people’s freedom of religious belief bear no criminal liability, civil liability or administrative liability. So provisions of liability on infringing upon citizen’s freedom of religious belief should be added into existing religious legal system.
