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By:
  • Dagmar Dehmer

For the new head of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), Erik Solheim, it is clear that climate change plays a role in the drying up of Lake Chad. And that this dramatic environmental change, which has made hundreds of thousands of fishermen unemployed, is a crisis factor in the militant confrontation with the terrorist organization Boko Haram. Mariam Traore Chazalnoel of the International Organization for Migration (IOM) is more cautious. There are no studies on this yet, she says. But she also recognizes a plausible connection. The fact that climate change is an amplifier of crises and conflicts is something that researchers now agree on. In a project funded by the German Federal Foreign Office, the think tank Adelphi lists conflicts with and without reference to environmental changes such as climate change in a constantly growing database. The Lake Chad conflict, which affects northern Nigeria, Niger, Chad and Cameroon, can also be found there.

On the other hand, the question of the extent to which environmental changes such as climate change can also trigger migration movements remains controversial. The issue will also be discussed intensively at the first migration summit hosted by outgoing UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in mid-September. Susanne Melde, head of the Data Centre for Environment and Migration, which was founded in Berlin almost a year ago, cites 8.6 million newly displaced persons due to conflict and 19.2 million due to natural disasters in 2015 alone for the number of internally displaced persons - i.e. people who had to flee but remained in their own country.

Nobody wants to talk about climate refugees
However, climate refugees are not to be addressed in the UN Refugee Convention. The fear that hitherto recognized individual reasons for fleeing could be called into question again in the course of such a debate is far too great among all those involved in refugee policy.

In the Paris Climate Agreement, on the other hand, the debate has found its place - under the heading "Loss and Damage", the unavoidable climate damage is discussed. Migration as a strategy for adapting to climate change is one topic among many, but Mariam Traore Chazalnoel is satisfied that it is being discussed anywhere at all. Susanne Melde points out that environmentally-induced migration rarely leads to Europe. Perhaps this is one of the reasons why the German government is not only funding the IOM data center, but is also one of the active governments of the so-called Nansen Initiative, which strives to improve the legal status of environmental refugees who cross national borders.

Fleeing natural disasters
Susanne Melde sees the bigger problem in victims of natural disasters who are so poor that they cannot flee at all. They are not among the approximately 244 million out of a good seven billion people worldwide who leave their homes for a variety of reasons. The number of people persecuted politically because of their religion, gender or sexuality is small in comparison. These are protected under the UN Refugee Convention. Less legal protection is enjoyed by those fleeing wars. Anyone fleeing because of a hurricane, an earthquake, a flood disaster or a drought has no protection status. The environmental conditions, the lack of economic prospects, which often enough also have to do with whether someone belongs to an ethnic and/or religious minority, or is discriminated against for other reasons, are always only one factor. People go abroad when they expect a solution to at least some of their problems elsewhere - and when they can afford it.

Adaptation to climate change
Melde is involved in studies that investigate whether migration can be an adaptation to climate change. In Vietnam, tens of thousands of fishermen have already been relocated to escape rising sea levels. In the newly built villages in the interior, however, the fishermen could not find work. "As a result, many have returned to their endangered villages," reports Melde. In Haiti, on the other hand, it can be proven, at least statistically, that those who left their homes after the great earthquake or after one of the major hurricanes were also better off economically than those who stayed.

For Melde, the questions arising from the research of the IOM Data Center have not yet been asked. How can the human rights of those who have to leave their region due to natural disasters or deteriorating environmental conditions such as desertification or permanent drought be protected? It is possible that the climate negotiations in the coming months will also discuss how the principles of the Nansen Initiative, i.e. the right to cross a border and receive a minimum level of care there, could also apply to internally displaced persons. Last but not least, the important question is what happens to those who cannot walk.