[B]KAROR, Palau[\/B]\u2014Salustiano Albert has lived in Palau, an archipelago in the western Pacific Ocean comprising over 500 islands, for more than three decades. Part of his family home, where three generations live, used to be flooded regularly by the tides, but in the past few years his entire house has been inundated. They survive by selling steamed sticky cakes made from taro root cooked with coconut, and have been dipping into their limited savings to repair the damage. Relocating is not an option. \u201cThis is my home,\u201d he says firmly. \u201cWe just cope\u2026 and carry on.\u201d <\/p>\n
Like many other Micronesian states, Palau is extremely vulnerable to rising sea levels and storm surges – several islands are less than a meter above sea level. In other low-lying countries like Bangladesh, people have become used to the idea of moving, but \u201cplanned relocation\u201d evokes strong feelings in this part of the Pacific. <\/p>\n
Palau gained independence from the United States in 1994 and signed the Compact of Free Association, which will run until 2044. Under this agreement, the US provides substantial financial assistance to Palau, whose nationals can also travel to the US with relative ease and work there. Almost everyone has a family member in the US, but no one talks about moving there permanently. <\/p>\n
Louis Josephs (not his real name) worked as a U.S. coast guard for several years. Palauans volunteer for the U.S. military at a higher rate than in any U.S. state, according to testimony by Edgard Kagan, Deputy Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs. But when Josephs decided to call it a day, he went \u201chome to Palau.\u201d <\/p>\n
He has always been a sailor and is aware of the climatic threat to his country, yet invested all his savings in a motorboat. \u201cOur cultural ties to our land and way of life are very strong,\u201d Josephs says, gazing at the startling blue sea. \u201cWe have protected these lands from big mining corporations and kept it green. It is pure and untouched. I grew up in this sea and I would like to be buried here, with my people in my land. I don\u2019t want anything else from life.\u201d<\/p>\n
[B]Move or sink[\/B]<\/p>\n
People in neighboring islands like Kiribati and Tuvalu are being forced to move away from the constantly encroaching sea. Planning for possible dual citizenship, shopping for land, and providing new skills so their people can get jobs in another country are among the policy decisions that confront low-lying countries and islands.<\/p>\n
But many Pacific islanders feel like Josephs. Tony de Brum, the Minister in Assistance to the President of the Marshall Islands, told IRIN that the idea of planned relocation is not even being considered. \u201cIf we do that, it will be an admittance of failure in our part,\u201d on two counts – adaptation and global mitigation efforts. <\/p>\n
[B]\u201cRefugee\u201d status unwanted[\/B]<\/p>\n
The perception that all small island states and low-lying countries are lobbying for \u201cclimate refugee\u201d status in the developed world is not true. At the last climate talks held under the UN Climate Change Convention on Climate Change, in Poland in 2013, the term \u201cplanned relocation\u201d was removed from the text dealing with a new approach, called the Warsaw International Mechanism, which will consider loss and damage caused by climate change.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cPlanned relocation only appears under \u2018Adaptation\u2019, which is often interpreted as happening at the national level [within the country],\u201d said Koko Warner, a scientist at the UN University and an author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Working Group II, which covers impacts, adaptation and vulnerability. <\/p>\n
\u201cLoss and damage might be interpreted as those negative climate impacts that exceed a country\u2019s ability to mitigate and adapt… Some countries expressed reservations about the idea of having planned relocation in the text on loss and damage, since these countries (especially small island states) have hardly contributed to dangerous climate change, but would be asked to concede significant things like administration of viable populations and habitable territory\u2014both key parts of sovereignty,\u201d Warner pointed out.<\/p>\n
But on the shores of many small island states a new reality has already arrived. The Pacific Islands Framework for Action on Climate Change, which saw planned relocation as last resort, is now reconsidering its decision. <\/p>\n
This follows a recent consultation between the Pacific islands and the Nansen Initiative, the global effort to examine the protection of \u201cclimate refugees.\u201d <\/p>\n
This follows recent discussions between the Pacific islands and the Nansen Initiative, a global effort to examine the protection of \u201cclimate refugees.\u201d Any planned relocation to another country would have to define the legal status of the relocated community in the new state; help communities adapt to local customs and laws; include consultation with potential host communities; and help the diaspora community maintain their cultural ties, e.g., by allowing dual citizenship.<\/p>\n
[B]Need for the UN forum [\/B]<\/p>\n
Countries and experts have been lobbying at the UNFCCC process for recognition of climate change-related migration issues, so as to access funds and technical support provided by various mechanisms, some of which are still being negotiated. <\/p>\n
Even activists who do not have much faith in the UN process concede the need to source public funding. This includes people like Scott Leckie, who set up Displacement Solutions, a Geneva-based NGO that supports refugees and internally displaced persons, and helps governments plan for the relocation of people displaced by climatic events.<\/p>\n
Leckie regularly advises a number of UN agencies on housing and land matters. He believes everyone on earth is entitled to housing, land and property rights under international and domestic human rights law, and that these should form the core component of development, with the enforcement of domestic laws and policies to resolve climate displacement. <\/p>\n
With the help of jurists he has developed a global framework based on these principles, called the Peninsula Principles on Climate Displacement. He hopes any displaced person would be able to use the principles to hold their government accountable. <\/p>\n
But securing these rights requires funding. \u201cFunds need to be urgently allocated toward adaptation measures\u2026 with clear earmarks for land-based solutions to climate displacement,\u201d Leckie says. <\/p>\n
[B]Not easy [\/B]<\/p>\n
It is a tremendous task, as Leckie and DS discovered in 2008 when they tried to help people from Papua New Guinea\u2019s Carteret islands, about 80km north of neighboring Bougainville island. DS found privately owned fertile land in Bougainville, which the owner was willing to sell at a low price, but the money did not arrive in time. Now, \u201ca handful of Carteret islanders have relocated to Bougainville, while hundreds of families barely eke out an existence on their increasingly threatened island home,\u201d Leckie said. <\/p>\n
DS has had some success in Bangladesh, where it has been working for several years with local organizations, in particular Young Power for Social Action, based in the country\u2019s second largest city, Chittagong. In 2013 they identified parcels of land safe from erosion and with access to social services. They intend to conduct a feasibility study and present it to the local authorities, with a formal request to resettle people displaced by climatic events, who wish to move voluntarily. <\/p>\n
Countries will need technical expertise, which the UNFCCC process could provide. A joint report on loss and damage, produced in 2013 by the NGOs CARE, ActionAid and the World Wide Fund for Nature, suggests that a specific working group on migration, displacement and relocation should take up the issue, said Sven Harmeling, the Climate Change Advocacy Coordinator for CARE. This would be done when a two-year work plan starts as part of the elaboration of the Warsaw mechanism, he added. <\/p>\n
Scientists like Warner, and aid workers like Harjeet Singh, ActionAid\u2019s international coordinator for disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation, refer people who question the link between climate change and migration to research underlining the connection. <\/p>\n
Warner led a series of scientific studies detailing loss and damage from a changing climate, which is forcing many people in the developing world to move, and says they found that few households were able to use migration as an adaptation measure. Existing policy responses to migration were more supportive of people with skills and not those \u201cmigrating from a position of great vulnerability and who face climate-related, non-temporary problems.\u201d<\/p>\n
Singh cites an ActionAid study in Bangladesh, in which men from at-risk communities, \u201cwho move on a seasonal basis in search of employment in urban areas, are now extending their stay due to climate change impacts. Poor people tend to lack the resources and social networks to plan migration. They spend more time away from their families, which has adverse impacts on their social lives.\u201d <\/p>\n
Ultimately, resolving \u201cclimate displacement remains a question of will,\u201d says Leckie. \u201cGenerating this will across all political parties, ideologies, countries of differing levels of wealth, and social and economic development\u2026 is a task all of those who care about the rights of climate-displaced people must now embrace with conviction and vigor.\u201d [B][I](Jaspreet Kindra)[\/I][\/B]<\/p>\n
[I]Source: http:\/\/www.irinnews.org\/report\/99470\/will-fleeing-home-be-the-last-resort-as-the-climate-changes[\/I]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
KAROR, Palau\u2014Salustiano Albert has lived in Palau, an archipelago in the western Pacific Ocean comprising over 500 islands, for more than three decades. Part of his family home, where three generations live, used to be flooded regularly by the tides, but in the past few years his entire house has been inundated.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-175153","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175153","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=175153"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175153\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=175153"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=175153"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=175153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}