The new provisional Winter Package has been agreed on, it is now up to Member States to fully implement it. European Vice-President, Maroš Šefčovič, is to present on the 18th of November a first-ever Communication on the State of the Energy Union. Leading journalist on energy, Hughes Belin, also tells us that the Heating & Cooling strategy for Europe is now likely for early next year, and about the Commission’s update on the SET-plan, followed by the informal Energy Council on the 23rd of September. All the details in this month’s Energy Briefing.
New research says keeping large fish populations intact is crucial for carbon capture and long-term storage.
Continued unsustainable harvesting of large predatory fish, including the culling of sharks, can have far-reaching consequences for the way we tackle climate change.
Professor Rod Connolly, a marine scientist from Griffith University's Australian Rivers Institute, is the co-author of new research that says keeping populations of larger fish intact is critical to carbon accumulation and long-term storage in vegetated coastal habitats such as saltmarsh, mangroves and seagrass.
A paper, "Predators help protect carbon stocks in blue carbon ecosystems", is published in the journal Nature Climate Change and identifies the urgent need for further research on the influence of predators on carbon cycling, and improved policy and management with regard to blue carbon reserves.
The research comes as Australia in particular, in response to a recent spate of shark attacks -- some fatal -- engages in fierce public debate over shark culling.
Professor Connolly warns the loss of top order predators through excessive culling or over-fishing has serious environmental ramifications.
"Altering the numbers of top ocean predators has major consequences for the way we tackle climate change," says Professor Connolly.
"These predators have a cascading effect on the food web and the ecosystem generally that ultimately changes the amount of carbon captured and locked up in the seabed."
Coastal wetlands play a crucial role in this process, extracting carbon from the atmosphere and burying it in the mud for hundreds and even thousands of years.
"When we change the abundance of higher order predators, this affects the number of smaller animals living in the mud, and that has flow-on effects for carbon storage in coastal wetlands," says Professor Connolly.
"We are already aware of the need to manage how many fish we take and from where. But we should also know that our decisions affect climate change.
Professor Connolly says the coastal wetlands that fringe the world's continents are doing a power of environmental good, taking a quarter of a trillion kilograms of carbon out of the atmosphere every year.
However, that efficiency can be easily compromised.
"Predators play an important and potentially irreplaceable role in carbon cycling. The effect of the disproportionate loss of species high in the food chain cannot be underestimated."
A new WWF report reveals an alarming decline in marine biodiversity over the last few decades. According to WWF’s Living Blue Planet Report, populations of marine vertebrates have declined by 49% between 1970 and 2012, with some fish species declining by almost 75%.
In addition to fish, the report shows steep declines in coral reefs, mangroves and seagrasses that support marine food webs and provide valuable services to people. With over 25% of all marine species living in coral reefs and about 850 million people directly benefiting from their economic, social and cultural services, the loss of coral reefs would be a catastrophic extinction with dramatic consequences on communities.
According to the report, the biggest drivers of these declining trends are from human actions--mainly overfishing, habitat destruction, and climate change. Although the report paints a dim picture of ocean health, it also provides solutions and opportunities to turn the tide. It highlights the need to protect critical marine habitats, manage fish stocks more sustainably, improve fishing practices, and redirect financial flows to support these needed initiatives.
“The good news is there are abundant opportunities to reverse these trends,” said Brad Ack, senior vice president for oceans at WWF. “Stopping black market fishing, protecting coral reefs, mangroves and other critical ocean habitats, and striking a deal in Paris to slash carbon pollution are all good for the ocean, the economy, and people. Now is the time for the US and other world players to lead on these important opportunities.”
One immediate opportunity for international action happens later this month when world leaders meet in New York to discuss the UN’sSustainable Development Goals. At the meeting, it’s essential that political leaders support the goals with significant investment and meaningful implementation plans to address the habitat destruction, illegal fishing, overharvest, and marine pollution driving the degradation of our oceans.
“The ocean is a renewable resource that can provide for all future generations if the pressures are dealt with effectively,” said Marco Lambertini, Director General of WWF International. “If we live within sustainable limits, the ocean will contribute to food security, livelihoods, economies and our natural systems.”
To download the WWF report, please visit this website.
Study shows how marine mammals pack muscle cells with oxygen-holding protein.
The shape of myoglobin (red) includes a waterproof pocket that is used to store heme (green), a molecule that allows myoglobins and hemoglobins to transport oxygen. CREDIT: Jeff Fitlow/Rice University.
The ultra-stable properties of the proteins that allow deep-diving whales to remain active while holding their breath for up to two hours could help Rice University biochemist John Olson and his colleagues finish a 20-year quest to create lifesaving synthetic blood for human trauma patients.
In a new study featured this week in the Journal of Biological Chemistry, Olson and colleagues George Phillips, Lucian Smith and Premila Samuel compared the muscle protein myoglobin from humans, whales and other deep-diving mammals. Myoglobin holds oxygen for ready use inside muscle cells, and the study found that marine mammals have ultra-stable versions of myoglobin that tend not to unfold. The researchers found that stability was the key for cells to make large amounts of myoglobin, which is explains why deep-diving mammals can load their muscle cells with far more myoglobin than humans.
"Whales and other deep-diving marine mammals can pack 10-20 times more myoglobin into their cells than humans can, and that allows them to 'download' oxygen directly into their skeletal muscles and stay active even when they are holding their breath," said Olson, Rice's Ralph and Dorothy Looney Professor of Biochemistry and Cell Biology. "The reason whale meat is so dark is that it's filled with myoglobin that is capable of holding oxygen. But when the myoglobin is newly made, it does not yet contain heme. We found that the stability of heme-free myoglobin is the key factor that allows cells to produce high amounts of myoglobin."
That's important to Olson because he wants to create a strain of bacteria that can generate massive quantities of another protein that's closely related to myoglobin. Olson has spent two decades studying hemoglobin, a larger, more complex oxygen-carrying protein in blood. Olson's goal is to create synthetic blood for use in transfusions. Hospitals and trauma specialists currently rely on donated whole blood, which is often in short supply and has a limited storage life. A crucial part of Olson's plan is maximizing the amount of hemoglobin that a bacterium can express.
"Our results confirm that protein stability is the key," Olson said. "In this study, Premila and George developed an in vitro method for testing myoglobin expression outside of living cells. That allowed us to carefully control all the variables. We found that the amount of fully active myoglobin expressed was directly and strongly dependent on the stability of the protein before it bound the heme group."
All proteins have a characteristic shape, and the globin family of proteins is shaped around a pocket where heme is stored. The heme pocket opens and closes -- much like the pocket of a baseball glove -- to trap and release oxygen.
Samuel, a graduate student in the Department of BioSciences at Rice, said the heme-free form of myoglobin that she studied is called apoprotein or apomyoglobin.
"The more stable the apoprotein, the more final product we could make," she said. "Human apomyoglobin isn't very stable at all compared to that of the diving mammals, which have versions of the apoglobin that are up to 60 times more stable than ours."
Samuel said the stability differences aren't obvious if one simply compares the overall structures of the myoglobin from each species. Their overall shapes, including the shapes of their heme pockets, are the same. However, thanks to subtle differences in their amino acid sequences, the more stable myoglobins are better able to retain their shapes. Samuel said this underlying stability only becomes apparent when one studies the heme-free, or "apo" versions of the protein. She measured stability using chemicals that forced the apoproteins to unfold. By carefully measuring the amount of chemical required, she was able to precisely measure stability.
From left, Rice University biochemists George Phillips, Premila Samuel and John Olson use a 3-D visualization facility to study the structure and function of myoglobin (red) in the hopes of making recombinant hemoglobin as artificial blood for use in transfusions. Myoglobin and hemoglobin use a molecule called heme (green) to transport oxygen. CREDIT: Jeff Fitlow/Rice University
She said her work was made possible by three earlier studies. In 1999, Emily Scott, a graduate student in Olson's lab, noticed that sperm whale apomyoglobin was much more resistant to chemically induced unfolding than the corresponding human or pig apoproteins. Scott wondered if the resistance to unfolding was a trait of deep-diving whales, so she gathered samples from a variety of mammals and confirmed the idea in 2000.
At the same time, study co-author Smith, another of Olson's graduate students, was examining a catalog of 250 mutant sperm-whale apomyoglobins. He noticed that a certain class of mutations in the heme pocket caused the proteins to become extraordinarily stable even though the mutations damaged their ability to bind heme and oxygen.
Finally, in 2013, Michael Berenbrink of Liverpool University and Kevin Campbell of the University of Manitoba noted that deep-diving mammals expressed large amounts of myoglobin in their muscle tissue. Berenbrink and Campbell systematically analyzed the genes and available information for all mammalian myoglobins, including those from deep-diving species, and found that the myoglobins from aquatic mammals had large positive surface charges compared with those from land animals. They hypothesized that the charge differences allowed the aquatic species to pack more myoglobin into their muscle cells.
"I heard Berenbrink present his work, and I wondered whether we should re-investigate Emily's and Lucian's work on expression levels and apoglobin stability," Olson said. "At the time, we were in the process of trying to screen large-scale libraries of hemoglobin mutants to try to select for higher stability and expression as part of our work on evaluating blood substitutes. George had suggested we use a wheat-germ-based cell-free translation system for those screens, and Premila was preparing to test the methods with myoglobin.
"The three of us decided she should conduct her tests on a series of proteins that included myoglobins from humans, pigs and several of the deep-diving mammals that Emily had tested and Berenbrink had examined," Olson said. "We also used Lucian's Ph.D. results to construct three mutants that were far more stable than anything found in nature."
In her tests, Samuel compared the stability and cell-free expression level of myoglobins from humans, pigs, goosebeak whales, gray seals, sperm whales, dwarf sperm whales and the three mutants, which had low heme affinity but were 50 times more stable than apomyoglobins from the whales. The research confirmed that the stability of apoprotein is directly correlated with expression levels. For example, very little pig and human myoglobin could be made in the cell-free system, which yielded 10- to 20-fold higher amounts of whale and mutant myoglobins.
The results of the cell-free study unequivocally verify the expression-stability correlations that had been anecdotally observed in previous work in both mammalian cells and E. coli, Olson said.
"This work is very important for our projects on synthetic blood substitutes and determining the toxicity of acellular hemoglobin," he said. "Premila has laid the groundwork for high-throughput screening of large libraries of hemoglobin variants without the need for purifying milligram quantities of pure protein. This method is a big step forward in our efforts to identify more stable recombinant hemoglobins."
Environmental changes in the future, such as an increase in floods, land degradation and drought could result in changes in migration patterns in Europe, researchers write in a recent analysis. It is difficult to predict these exact migration patterns, however, as they are determined by a complex interplay of economic, political and social factors with environmental change, as well as adaptive capacity.
Environmental factors already influence population movement in Europe. For example, desertification in northern Africa is partly behind a recent increase in migration from the region to the European Mediterranean. The only recent displacement of people to Europe from natural environmental causes was from Montserrat in the West Indies, after the volcanic eruption that started in July 1995, which devastated much of the island. Also, many Europeans seeking better quality of life may move to other parts of the continent with a more agreeable climate; tourism in such areas would be expected to increase.
The analysis by UK researchers considers the potential impacts of environmental change on migration both within Europe and to Europe from neighbouring Mediterranean countries in northern Africa and the Middle East.
Economic, political, social and cultural factors are the main drivers of migration. However, they cannot be considered in isolation of each other and can be influenced by environmental factors. For example, the desertification in northern Africa has exacerbated poverty and contributed to the population movement. This complexity of drivers does make it difficult to predict the exact effects of the environment on migration.
Environmentally forced migration is currently rare in Europe, but there is a possibility that environmental change will play a bigger role in human movement in the future. Climate change will bring an increased risk of hazards, such as flooding and water shortages, in and around Europe.
The analysis highlights hazards in northern Africa and the Middle East which may indirectly, and in conjunction with other factors, increase migration levels into Europe. For example, dryland cropping agricultural techniques in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Egypt are very vulnerable to the effects of drought. A 1-metre rise in sea levels would have a major impact on populations in the southern Mediterranean around the Nile delta, affecting around 6 million people and causing the loss of 10% of arable land.
Although people in less developed countries are most vulnerable to environmental degradation, Europe has some vulnerabilities too. These could increase pressures on population movement. For instance, there is significant risk of flooding around the North Sea, despite flood defences being in place. Increased rainfall and snowmelt in future will increase this risk. Furthermore, a catastrophic 2m sea level rise would inundate large areas of Europe, in parts of the northern Mediterranean (Venice), as well as around the North Sea (UK and Netherlands). This could force populations to move from large areas in these countries.
Environmental change, such as an increase in flooding and drought, is inevitable in Europe and beyond, which is likely to increase pressures on people to move away from more hazard-prone and degraded areas, particularly from south to north, from south to east and from rural to urban areas. The analysis also comments that highly urbanised and developed parts of northern Europe could actually be the most vulnerable to climate change's impacts, owing to their dense populations and infrastructure.
However, good emergency planning and adaptation policies which mitigate the wet and dry extremes of our changing climate will reduce these pressures on migration, the authors say. They note that more significant investments in mitigation and emergency planning currently exist in the northern Mediterranean and northern Europe, than in the southern Mediterranean and southern Europe. They also note that, although the wealthier northern countries may seem more adaptable, these areas also host the greatest populations and intensive agriculture near the limits of water sustainability, so may actually be more vulnerable to loss of ecosystem services and increased climate change hazards.
A recent report presents a series of recommendations for how the EU could address the complex issue of climate change induced migration. There is now sufficient evidence to show that environment-related migration is occurring, and the time is right to put recommendations into practice, the report's authors argue.
Climate change has important implications for migration; for example, drought can degrade livelihoods and weaken people's ability to cope with poverty and conflict. The report highlights the fact that the vast majority of the world's climate-induced refugee population currently stay within their home regions — and therefore the combination of population growth, the increase in the quantity and intensity of extreme environmental events and a lack of adaptive capacity will put increasing pressure on their homelands.
The EU has recognised the problem of climate change-related migration. For example, its 2013 document 'Climate change, environmental degradation and migration' highlights the need for further analysis and says a comprehensive migration policy should consider environmentally triggered migration. The EU has also funded a number of research projects to improve our understanding of the issue.
The new think tank report says that the time has now come to put research evidence into practice and develop suitable policies. A holistic policy approach is needed to tackle the multi-dimensional nature of human movement in response to environmental degradation, it reasons.
It is difficult to develop well-designed policies that address this challenge because the links between climate change and migration are very complex. Furthermore, there is currently no legal definition of an 'environment-related migrant'. The issue is further complicated by unresolved questions of who is accountable and financially liable for climate-change-triggered migration.
However, complexity is not a reason to avoid tackling this issue, the report argues. It is also unlikely that large numbers of people will permanently move to Europe solely for climate-related reasons.
Women are seen as especially vulnerable to climate change's effects in many countries, because a lack of resources, education and decision-making powers, among other reasons, can restrict their mobility. However, the authors also make the point that some forms of migration reduce vulnerability. For example, there is evidence that some farmers in climate-stressed countries move to cities during periods of water shortage to find temporary work. The report's authors believe that the EU should take a leading role in addressing the phenomenon. They recommend that EU funding streams should create mechanisms for people to move from vulnerable areas and EU policies relating to environmental migration should give vulnerable groups special consideration.
The authors also recommend that language is considered carefully in institutional communication dealing with migration, as choice of words can express an opinion. For instance, calling someone an 'immigrant' or an 'emigrant' or a 'climate refugee' all have different implications, and may either reinforce or deconstruct negative stereotypes about migrants.
The authors emphasise that it is sensible to focus on preventing displacement in the first place. However, this should not be the sole focus of migration policy, which should also consider sharing the responsibility of migration in affected regions.
A human rights 'protection gap' exists for people forced to migrate by environmental stress and climate change, according to researchers. The lack of a legal framework and practices to protect 'environmental refugees' stems from the historic and political context of migration issues — and land access rights more broadly — the researchers say in a recently published paper.
There are a number of possible arguments and reasons for why populations displaced by floods, droughts and other environmental hazards do not have the same legal protection as other types of migrants, such as refugees fleeing war (protected through the UN's Geneva Convention relating to the status of refugees, among other instruments).
For instance, it may be more challenging to define the migration as 'forced' or to define the category of affected people. There is also the question of who should take responsibility to ensure migrants are safe, treated with dignity and empowered, and how this responsibility should be managed. Should countries that emit high levels of CO2 be responsible, for example, and should the migration be dealt with through a short-term humanitarian response to disaster?
This paper, a chapter in a 2014 book, argues that environmental stress-induced migration and displacement is best explained by historical and political factors. It reaches this conclusion by analysing the cases of five countries which are all highly vulnerable to climate change's impacts: Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya and Vietnam. None offer legal protection to environmental migrants.
Migration, more generally, is a highly sensitive issue in these countries. For instance, in Kenya, where land is the main source of livelihoods, there is ongoing use of eviction (i.e. forced migration) and displacement as tools for politically excluding communities, claiming power and accessing resources, the paper's authors say. These conditions, which stem from Kenya's colonial history, underlie many recent instances of violence and conflict in the country. Until such complex dynamics of wider migration and land rights issues are resolved, the authors assert that a rights-protection gap for Kenya's environmental migrants will remain.
Similarly, Bangladesh has a very politically charged, recent history of migration. Huge population movements following the 1947 partition of India and Pakistan left a legacy of 'political, social and cultural trauma', the authors state. Such traumatic associations mean that 'displacement' and 'displaced people', and the rights of displaced people, are not yet explicitly recognised in national legal and political frameworks.
The authors include a case study of how rights are not protected for people forced to move by 'silent and incremental' river bank erosion in Bangladesh. This environmental problem is thought to displace one million people every year. There are compensation measures for people who lose homes and land through erosion, but these tend only to benefit larger and more politically powerful landowners, a phenomenon perhaps linked to the lack of transparency. The authors assert that, in contrast, the majority of displaced people become increasingly marginalised and impoverished, and either become landless labourers in nearby villages or move to towns and cities.
The paper also points out that, in the five countries considered, migration due to climate change is seen as a future challenge and takes less priority than more immediate developmental and poverty reduction goals. However, it also posits that these countries' still-fragile governing bodies have a general reluctance to address human rights issues.
It also argues that it is not just material rights, such as shelter and sanitation, which are important for migrants. Political rights are very important too — such as the opportunity for migrants to contribute to decisions about resettlement schemes.
The migration, displacement and relocation of people needs to be properly addressed in climate change adaptation plans, says a UN report. Among the report's recommendations, National Adaptation Plans (NAPs) should ensure that communities affected by climate change-induced hazards, such as flooding and drought, become more resilient. Migration can also be seen as an adaptation strategy in itself.
Climate change's effects can lead to large-scale movement of people, within and between countries. It can occur when communities lose habitat and agricultural livelihoods to rising sea levels, floods, drought and other environmental hazards. This movement is already taking place in some areas around the world.
The report considers how to link human mobility issues with National Adaptation Plans (NAPs) to improve adaptation and mobility policies. NAPs are being created by the least developed countries that are party to the UNFCCC's Cancun Adaptation Framework. The EU and its Member States help fund and support adaptation efforts in developing countries, and provided €7.34 billion to 'fast-start finance' in 2010–2012.
Different types of mobility require different types of policy. As well as international migration, the report addresses displacement and planned relocation. Displacement occurs when people are forced to move within their countries, as well as abroad, to flee local disasters. Planned relocation is overseen by authorities and refers to the process of moving people out of disaster-affected areas.
Migration can be seen as both an opportunity and a challenge, the report says. It is important to reduce the pressures of migration, and participants involved in consultations in the Pacific region (as part of the Nansen Initiative) have emphasised that moving from their homes is a last resort and that they strongly support climate change mitigation efforts.
However, where migration does occur, it can have some positive effects. For example, voluntary migration from the central Pacific island nation of Kiribati has enabled migrants to send money home that strengthens the resilience of their community to climate change.
Movement can also place migrants in vulnerable situations, however. Kiribati's government has therefore included training (e.g. in nursing, teaching and the English language), as well as cultural acclimatisation training, for citizens as part of its 'migration with dignity' plans. These skills will help Kiribati's citizens settle abroad, and provide opportunities for adaptation when mitigation is no longer possible.
Displacement and relocation should be reduced, according to the report. This can be achieved by strengthening community resilience through, for example, irrigation and water management systems to protect against drought, and by enhancing food security and livelihoods. Early warning systems for hazards, shared environmental resources and measures to reduce conflict between communities could also be considered in NAPs. Such measures may help reduce the kind of displacement seen in the Greater Horn of Africa, where hundreds of thousands of people were forced to move within or from Somalia during 2010–2011 droughts.
The report highlights the importance of a strong evidence base for mobility and adaptation policies. This can be developed by looking at existing research and projects, such as the EU-funded project to help Pacific island countries manage the impacts of climate change on migration. Evidence should also come from consultations with affected communities, to take local knowledge into account.
Human migration as a result of climate change is now a reality. People across Africa, Asia and Latin America are moving in response to unpredictable rainfall patterns. The governments of Bangladesh, Papua New Guinea and small island states, such as the Solomon Islands, have already had to resettle people because of rising seas. A recent policy brief, published by the Institute for Environment and Human Security of the United Nations University, examines this issue and makes recommendations for policy.
The authors explored different facets of human movements as a result of climate change. They discuss the importance of recognising that these movements can be internal within a country or international; voluntary or forced; and either temporary or permanent. They can be the result of displacement, migration or planned relocation. Importantly, the needs of affected people can vary across all of these categories.
Such movements occur in response to several different impacts of climate change. Rising sea levels, desertification or permafrost melt may render some areas uninhabitable. Increased frequency of storms, floods, cyclones and heat-waves may force people to relocate, sometimes in the long term. Changes to regional weather systems may reduce access to essential resources such as water, as well as affecting livelihoods, especially fishing and farming. Finally, these impacts, either in isolation or combined, may result in conflict, again displacing people.
Research as part of the EU-funded EACH-FOR1 project examined 22 case studies in six regions of the world to demonstrate that rapidly changing environmental conditions are now driving changes to migration patterns. Another project, focusing on refugees from Ethiopia and Uganda found that worsening weather patterns caused resource scarcity, exacerbating pre-existing conflicts. In addition, these conflicts severely affected the refugees' abilities to deal with climate-related stresses.
Research in Africa, Asia and Latin America2 revealed that seasonal, temporary and even permanent migration is already being used to manage risks associated with rainfall variability and food insecurity, which are both worsening under climate change. Most migration is within national borders, the researchers found, and the majority of migrants are men, although the number of women is rising.
The policy brief emphasises the need to distinguish between resilient and vulnerable groups of people, both of which might migrate in response to climate change. Resilient people (those which tend to have more assets, education and access to adaptation strategies) use voluntary migration as a way of enhancing their resilience. This might involve a move to a non-agricultural job in the city, for example. Conversely, vulnerable people have fewer assets and may be forced to move for survival, in search of food, or work to buy food.
The brief's authors recommend that, where possible, policy should support a transition toward livelihoods that are not climate dependent. Particular focus should be given to those that are vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. For example, these individuals should be prioritised by national schemes for improved education or vocational training. Indeed, it is vital that states do not wait until migration has begun before making provisions for access to housing, land and property for people displaced by climate change. If conditions worsen to the point where the state must intervene to relocate populations, extreme care must be taken to reduce the negative effects of such a move. The brief highlights some key recommendations.
First, they assert, any forced relocation — where realistic options to choose from are no longer available — must be an absolute last resort. Second, planning is essential and any scheme should be part of a new sustainable development programme rather than a temporary measure. Third, it is vital that people to be moved are consulted on how the process could be best designed to work for them. Finally, the process does not end once people have moved. In their new homes they should be supported to restore and improve their livelihoods and incomes.
Policy should be designed to foster understanding and co-operation on this subject between neighbouring countries. While there is as yet no recognition that climate-displaced people be given refugee status, the human rights of climate-displaced people must be recognised. The brief concludes that more information on the complex impacts of migration and displacement is vital to create effective policy agreements for the future.
While extreme environmental events — such as floods and tsunamis — may trigger migrations, the underlying drivers of migration are far more complex and diverse, says new research. The research reviewed the available evidence on population movements associated with extreme weather events and found that people could find themselves 'trapped' and vulnerable, whether they stayed at their homes or moved to new locations.
Extreme natural disasters such as floods and hurricanes, can cause huge amounts of damage to life, property and economic activity. Large numbers of people have been displaced by recent weather-related disasters, such as floods in central Europe, Brazil, Mozambique, Thailand and Kenya. Widespread floods also affected millions of people in Pakistan and China in 2010.
Over the next 50 years climate change is expected to increase the frequency and severity of extreme environmental events, leading to growing international concern about how to handle their effects.
Forming part of this concern is the belief that extreme environmental events are linked with human migrations and displacement, within and between countries, and that climate change may lead to an increase in corresponding migrations and displacements.
While the relationship between extreme environmental events and migration — such as people fleeing disaster prone areas — may appear simple, there is a growing body of scientific literature questioning this simple relationship.
New research has sought to review the available evidence on population movements associated with weather-related extreme events and examine the underlying causes and drivers of migration.
The authors found that the drivers of migration in response to extreme weather events were multi-causal and complex. While an extreme environmental event could trigger migration, it may be just one of a number of underlying causes, including individual, social, economic and political causes, leading to the decision to move.
For example, almost half of the people displaced in Indonesia and Sri Lanka following the 2007 Indonesian Tsunami were unable to return to their homes. This was partly due to the nature of the forcible relocations into 'camps' created to house them, and partly due to the creation of a coastal 'exclusion zone' intended to prevent return to an area now considered vulnerable to natural disasters.
Immobility was found to be an especially relevant policy issue for migration. Vulnerability to extreme events and the ability to move is related to wealth (social, economic and political). People of low to medium wealth often become trapped, either in situ during disasters or where they have been displaced, following a disaster. Their vulnerability means they are unable to move for financial, political or social reasons, while those of greater wealth are much more resilient and better able to move.
The authors suggest that putting the concerns of vulnerable populations at the centre of development policy and improving adaptation to environmental change will help improve resilience in disaster risk reduction policies. However, they also caution that policymakers must be careful when they seek to reduce the vulnerability of populations in situ as this can be seen as a policy of 'containment', and risks leaving people trapped in conditions where they may be even more vulnerable if protection measures fail.
The authors conclude that extreme environmental events are likely to remain a significant policy challenge in the future. In the context of climate change and a future increase in extreme events, adequate adaptation strategies and mechanisms must be put in place to ensure rapid responses with clear choices for those displaced to return home or to move elsewhere. The existence of these choices may, the authors say, determine whether future policy will be needed to give legal protection to displaced people.
