Water stress, ocean levels to unleash 'climate exodus'

Richard Ingham Yahoo News 10 Jun 09;

BONN, Germany (AFP) – Tens of millions of people will be displaced by climate change in coming years, posing social, political and security problems of an unprecedented dimension, a new study said on Wednesday.

"Unless aggressive measures are taken to halt global warming, the consequences for human migration and displacement could reach a scope and scale that vastly exceed anything that has occurred before," its authors warned.

"Climate change is already contributing to migration and displacement.

"All major estimates project that the trend will rise to tens of millions of migrants in coming years. Within the next few decades, the consequences of climate change for human security efforts could be devastating."

The report, "In Search of Shelter," was compiled by specialists from Columbia University in New York and the United Nations University, and from a non-governmental organisation, CARE International.

It was presented to journalists on the sidelines of the UN climate talks in Bonn, a staging post to an envisioned new global pact for tackling global warming and its impacts.

The study swung the spotlight on several regions that, according to projections, will be badly hit by rising sea levels, flood or drought.

Rather than a migration from poor countries to rich ones, the exodus is most likely to unfold within poor nations, with a movement mainly from the countryside to cities, thus further burdening urban infrastructure, it said.

In central Mexico, where tens of millions of people live, rainfall in some areas could decline by up to 50 percent by 2080, "rendering many livelihoods unviable and dramatically raising the risk of chronic hunger," the report said.

South Asia faces both short- and long-term threats.

Warming will accelerate melting from Himalayan glaciers in springtime, thus heightening the probability of flooding. But glacier shrinkage will eventually affect the flow of major rivers that wind down from the Himalayan foothills.

"This has a lot of consequences for agricultural production in one of the world's most populous regions," said Charles Ehrhart, climate-change coordinator at CARE.

The Ganges Delta, small island states and other low-lying areas, meanwhile, are in peril from rising sea levels.

If ocean levels rise by two metres (seven feet), "9.4 million people would be completely flooded out" in Bangladesh alone, said Ehrhart.

A two-metre (seven-feet) rise is seen by most climate scientists as being at the top end of predictions for what could happen this century.

In 2007, the UN's Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) predicted sea levels will rise by up to 59 centimeters (23 inches) before 2100 due the expansion of warmer waters.

But this figure does not factor in a partial melting of massive ice sheets in western Antarctica and Greenland, a scenario now identified by more recent research.

The new report urged policymakers to develop tools to identify regions and populations at risk of being displaced by climate change.

And they said funds mustered to help cope with climate change under the future global treaty must also be directed at poor migrants.

The new pact, designed to run from 2012, would chiefly slash emissions from fossil fuels and deforestation that are warming Earth's atmosphere, affecting weather patterns.

The report admits that the definition of a climate migrant is complex, as poverty, a run of bad harvests or civil strife are usually the immediate, and thus most visible, triggers for displacement.

Estimates of the likely numbers range from 25 to 50 million people by 2010, while the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) has pitched a figure of 200 million by 2050.

The term "climate refugee" is shunned by UN organisations, as "refugee" is a term with legal connotations under the 1851 Geneva Convention.

Climate change forces new migration response
Gerard Wynn, Reuters 10 Jun 09;

BONN (Reuters) - Climate change will force millions of people to leave their homes to flee rising seas and drought over the coming decades, requiring a new plan for mass migration, said a report published on Wednesday.

Funds were needed to help migrants escape natural disasters which will worsen, threatening political stability, said the report published by the U.N. University, CARE International and Columbia University.

"Environmentally induced migration and displacement has the potential to become an unprecedented phenomenon -- both in terms of scale and scope," the study said.

"In coming decades, climate change will motivate or force millions of people to leave their homes in search of viable livelihoods and safety."

The report said that the science of climate change was too new to forecast exact projected numbers of migrants, but it cited an International Organization for Migration estimate of 200 million environmentally induced migrants by 2050.

Wednesday's study highlighted especially vulnerable regions of the world including: island states such as Tuvalu and the Maldives, dry areas such as Africa's Sahel and in Mexico, and delta regions in Bangladesh, Vietnam, and Egypt.

"In the densely populated Ganges, Mekong, and Nile River deltas, a sea level rise of 1 meter could affect 23.5 million people and reduce the land currently under intensive agriculture by at least 1.5 million hectares," it said.

Climate scientists say sea levels could rise by at least a meter this century.

The world needed to invest to make poor communities and countries more resilient to climate change, the report said.

"These funds must be new and additional to existing commitments, such as those for Official Development Assistance," said the report "In Search of Shelter: Mapping the Effects of Climate Change on Human Migration and Displacement."

For example, investment in irrigation would make farmers less dependent on rains. Education would also help -- for example tilling the soil less leaves a protective mulch, which preserves moisture.

Migrants from climate disasters may need new rights, the report said. "Those displaced by the chronic impacts of climate change will require permanent resettlement. At present, people who move due to gradually worsening living conditions may be categorized as voluntary economic migrants and denied recognition of their special protection needs."

U.N.-led talks to extend the Kyoto Protocol after 2012 are taking place in Bonn, and struggling with rich-poor splits on how to share the cost of preparing for and curbing climate change.