Climate and Conflict in the South Pacific

By: Gursimran Padda

In-situ adaptation, or “On sight adaptation”, focuses on solving problems at the local level and within local systems and with local voices/perspectives by undergoing community building projects, as described by Laurice Jamero et al. in “In-situ adaptation against climate change can enable relocation of impoverished small islands”. These projects are done in order to address socio-economic factors that characterize vulnerability to climate change. In-situ adaptation is influenced by resource availability and prices, government policy towards agriculture, and innovation within technology, as stated by Xuchun Liu and Yan Tan’s “In-situ Adaption and Out-Migration: Enablers and Constraints Among Rural Households of the Mountainous Region of Southern Ningxia, Northwest China” (Liu & Tan, 3). This exemplifies that local perspectives should be understood due to outside influences on adaptation. 

In-situ adaptation, along with out-migration/immigration act as ways communities can diversify and protect their livelihoods from climate change. Examples of community building projects and adaptation that can be done in place of migration include improving water conservation and irrigation systems, applying water-saving techniques in farming, and cultivating drought resistant crops (Liu & Tan 11). 

One of the biggest factors that makes in-situ adaptation more prominent is that many people in the South Pacific don’t want to leave the island or are unable to leave. In the case of the latter, this is closely connected to economic factors but for the former this is more due to cultural reasons. Going back to the initial story of Guam, the peoples of the Pacific are closely linked to their islands, spiritually and culturally. The Fijian concept of vanua for example is a concept that ties the Fijian people, customs, spirituality, and land together, as stated by Carol Farbotko’s piece for the Migration Policy Institute. These in the modern day are all combined when analyzing sustainable development for a greater community, with similar ideas being seen across Pacific cultures such as Iwi in the Maori culture (Farbotko). Land is in many ways inseparable from the people, so on top of potential economic and development concerns there are also cultural ones. 

In-situ adaptation is integral to understanding the communal needs of the people in the South Pacific, and they help bridge the gap between policy makers, climate scientists, and the people of the region.

 

Jamero, Ma. Laurice, et al. “In-Situ Adaptation against Climate Change Can Enable Relocation of Impoverished Small Islands.” Marine Policy, Pergamon, Oct. 2019, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0308597X18303324.

Farbotko, Carol. “No Retreat: Climate Change and Voluntary Immobility in the Pacific Islands.” The Migration Policy Institute, 10 Oct. 2019, https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/no-retreat-climate-change-and-voluntary-immobility-pacific-islands#:~:text=The%20alternative%20to%20voluntary%20mobility,negative%20impacts%20on%20affected%20groups.&text=In%20the%20Pacific%20Islands%2C%20saltwater,to%20make%20some%20areas%20uninhabitable.

Liu, Xiuchun. Tan, Yan. “In-situ Adaption and Out-Migration: Enablers and Constraints Among Rural Households of the Mountainous Region of Southern Ningxia, Northwest China.” International Union for the Scientific Study of Population, 26-3 Aug. 2013 https://iussp.org/sites/default/files/event_call_for_papers/TanLiu_In-situ%20Adaption%20and%20Out-Migration%20in%20Southern%20Ningxia%20of%20China_IUSSP2013.pdf 

By: Gursimran Padda

Free Movement Agreements (FMAs) are agreements in which groups of countries come together in order to create a common market and more closely integrate their economies. Within an FMA, the movement of goods, services, and most importantly people, becomes much easier. 

Specifically speaking for the movement of people, this is done through visa free travel for citizens of member countries within the agreement. This is a highly important point as under current refugee law, climate change refugees and environmentally displaced persons are not recognized as refugees. According to the activist group “Climate Refugees” the problem lies in how refugee law only protects those fleeing direct persecution by an agent (such as a terror group or government), the environment and climate change displacement isn’t included. Due to such stipulations they are not granted refugee rights and their asylum cases are not likely to go through, as stated by Ama Francis in “Climate-Induced Migration & Free Movement Agreements” (Francis FMA, 124-126). Through FMAs, those that are displaced through climate change or environmentally related reasons, don’t have to prove their case, which not only makes it easier for them to escape their situation and flee, but also it removes the stigma of being known as a climate refugee, a term disliked by many in the South Pacific, as stated by an article from United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

FMAs also respond to the multi-causal nature of climate change and environmental displacement, and the complexities of migration as a result of it. Ama Francis states in “Free Movement Agreements & Climate Induced Migration: A Caribbean Case Study”, that climate change encompasses a broad range of causes for displacement, such as flooding and droughts mentioned in prior sections, and those that escape it do so either voluntarily or are forced to, and from here they are either temporary or long term migrants (Francis Caribbean, 20-21). Moreover migration, including climate change based displacement, primarily happens at the regional level (Francis Caribbean, 21-22). FMAs don’t just allow those seeking refuge to bypass refugee laws, but it tackles what is a regional problem by allowing migrants access to jobs and allowing them to escape within their region visa free without having to prove a case or carry any burden. Through regional movement, migrants also have access to countries closer in culture to their own, which could lessen (Francis, 23)  the adverse impact of displacement to a new country. 

Economic growth is also perpetuated by FMAs, at both the national and local levels, which could be further reinvested into resilience and sustainability programs. One of the most notable FMAs is the EU’s Schengen Area, which has been instrumental in economic growth and easing trade between member countries, as found by a study conducted by the European Parliamentary Research Service. Applying a similar agreement within the South Pacific can increase trade between member countries which could increase capital. Likewise, FMAs also allow citizens access to jobs in different countries which in return can increase remittance flows at the local level, allowing money to enter local communities which can be used to combat climate change related issues there. Additionally, FMAs can also allow workers who do work in another country within the agreement to benefit from that job’s social security benefits, as done so by CARICOM in the Caribbean through the transferring and integration of social security rights and benefits (Francis FMA, 127).

FMAs also have an advantage in that due to a variety of reasons a global framework on the rights of climate refugees is unlikely to occur, as stated by an article from Amy Lieberman of DevEx. This is primarily due to the complexities related to climate change based migration mentioned above and the complexities of creating a global framework that most countries are willing to agree on. Despite this, FMAs tackle the problem in a more realistic way as neighboring countries not only have greater degrees of trust with each other and mutual reliance (Francis Caribbean, 25) , but the pool of countries needed for an FMA to go through are much smaller than a global framework. Though the likelihood is unlikely, new changes are being made such as the creation of the Global Compact which seeks to expand the rights of migrants, especially those not already protected under the strict refugee conventions of international law.

 

 

Lieberman , Amy. “A ‘Super Framework’ for Climate Migration Isn’t on the Way .” DevEx, 29 Oct. 2019, https://www.devex.com/news/a-super-framework-for-climate-migration-isn-t-on-the-way-95903.

Francis, Ama. “Climate-Induced Migration & Free Movement Agreements.” Journal of International Affairs, vol. 73, no. 1, 2019, pp. 123–34, https://www.jstor.org/stable/26872782. 

Francis, Ama. “Free Movement Agreements & Climate Induced Migration: A Caribbean Case Study.” Sabin Center for Climate Change, Columbia Law School, Sept. 2019. http://columbiaclimatelaw.com/files/2019/09/FMAs-Climate-Induced-Migration-AFrancis.pdf 

“The Economic Impact of Suspending Schengen.” European Parliamentary Research Service, European Union Parliament, Mar, 2016, https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/ATAG/2016/579074/EPRS_ATA(2016)579074_EN.pdf

“The Problem.” Climate Refugees, https://www.climate-refugees.org/why#:~:text=The%201951%20Refugee%20Convention%20offers,social%20group%20or%20political%20opinion.“Pacific Islanders Reject ‘Climate Refugee’ Status, Want to ‘Migrate with Dignity’, Sids Conference Hears – World.” ReliefWeb, OCHA, 15 Sept. 2014, https://reliefweb.int/report/world/pacific-islanders-reject-climate-refugee-status-want-migrate-dignity-sids-conference.

By: Gursimran Padda

One of the most prominent forms of not just environmental migration, but migration generally is internal migration according to the United Nations Migration’s “2020 World Migration Report” (UN Migration, 19). Within the South Pacific this occurs as well, mainly through urbanization, or the movement of people from rural communities to more developed cities. The South Pacific, according to United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific’s “Ocean Cities of The Pacific Islands Policy Brief #1 The Ocean and The City”, is a highly urbanized part of the world, and the rates continue to increase (UNESCAP, 2). Urbanization can be explained by the push and pull factors mentioned previously, but in the case of the South Pacific, one of the biggest pull factors is greater availability and accessibility for fresh water in more urbanized areas.

When analyzing urbanization in the South Pacific, the country of Kiribati works as a perfect example. In 1947 Kiribati’s capital of South Tarawa, situated on Tarawa Island, had roughly ~1671 people according to a TIME article published by Mélissa Godin, but as of 2020 the Kiribati official census believes this number to be 63,439, a massive increase in its population. In a study done by the Kiribati government in 2012 entitled “Island Report Series: South Tarawa”, South Tarawa has Kiribati’s highest growth rate in terms of population, and the third highest by percentage, with a growth rate of 4.4% between 2005 and 2010. 

South Tarawa has a land area of 15.76 square kilometers however, this realistically drops to 12 square kilometers when ignoring unusable land  (Kiribati Government, 1-4). This paints the picture of a very densely populated portion of a very small piece of land. The high urban population, coupled with a high urban growth rate have caused problems for the small portion of the island. According to Justin T. Locke’s “Climate Change-Induced Migration in the Pacific Region: Sudden Crisis and Long-Term Developments” resources have been under pressure, most notably freshwater, and squatter settlements have increased (Locke, 174). Overcrowding on the island has increased the spread of disease, mainly caused by poor or overstressed sanitary systems such as lack of garbage disposal systems, and poor sewage systems (Locke, 173-176). South Tarawa also has a noticeably higher infant mortality rate of 69 per 1000 live births, in comparison to other regions and has had high malnutrition rates, both due to the lack of resource access (Locke, 175). 

Much of these issues are already exacerbated by climate change, as mentioned in the section prior, as rising sea levels play an immense role in freshwater access and reasons for migration to begin with. Though no clear links have been established (Locke, 174), it is likely that South Tarawa’s population has grown in conjunction with climate change related resource access and livelihood damages in neighboring rural islands, which fuel internal migration. Policy responses to alleviate health problems caused by overpopulation are the “Integrated Land and Population Development Programme” (Locke, 175) which is part of the greater Climate Change Adaptation plan by the Kiribati government. The plans entail relocation of people to outer islands and employing family planning to stabilize the population. When dealing with squatters, the government plans to incentivize movement if people were to do so voluntarily. This program is however only a short term solution, as due to high birth rates and continued climate change related pressure, internal migration cannot be the sole solution.

Kiribati’s story is just one example, other countries in the South Pacific are falling victim to similar problems, which just shows how cooperation within the international and regional community of the South Pacific is necessary. Many countries within the South Pacific have been looking elsewhere through migration to help combat this problem.