Gotta Keep on Movin':
October 2018
by Varun, Suhas and the IMN team
Anthropogenic or human-induced climate change is real. There will always be uncertainty in understanding a system as complex as the world’s climate. However, there is now strong evidence that significant global warming is occurring.
- General Overview of the relationship between Climate Change and Migration
- Climate Migration in the Indian Subcontinent
- Case Study: August 2018 Kerala Floods
- Case Study: The Bangladesh-India Corridor
- India Migration Policy Index 2018: White Paper
But how does climate change relate to migration?
Climate change manifests in two forms, namely gradual and sudden. Gradual changes are increasing aridity, desertification, loss of biodiversity, rising sea level and so on, while sudden changes include extreme weather events like cyclones, floods, severe droughts and more.
Environmentalists have claimed that the effects of global warming, especially on sea-levels and rainfall patterns, will lead directly to massive population displacements.
On the other hand, migration experts have pointed out that migration is driven by many interacting factors, and can rarely be reduced to the effects of just one form of change, such as climate change.
The synthesis of the above two points of views is that climate change will affect migration through its influence on a range of economic, social and political drivers which themselves affect migration. However, the range and complexity of the interactions between these drivers mean that it will be difficult to distinguish migrants for whom climate factors are the sole driver.
But there is no doubt that climate change is intensifying environmental degradation and natural hazards in many regions. Reliable global estimates for 2017 peg the number of people displaced (forced migration) by climate-related disasters (sudden onset) at 18 million. (see the graphic below)
|
|
|
The Migration Matters series addresses climate change and migration with Hein De Haas
|
|
|
|
Climate-induced migration in India
India, and the larger South Asian region, is extremely vulnerable to climate change. It has one of the highest densities of economic activity in the world, and a significant proportion of the population relies on natural resource bases like rainfed cropland.
The latest available Indian Census (2011) figures reveal that over 40% of the population are migrants, a large majority of which is internal migrants. Given that most of the displacements triggered by environmental factors are intra-national (within India), rather than international. It is imperative to understand the relationship between migration and climate change in the Indian Subcontinent.
One of the challenges of understanding climate-induced migration is the lack of reliable empirical estimates. It is difficult to identify groups of people already displaced by climate change, so any attempts to forecast the number of climate-induced migrants is fraught with semantic and methodological difficulties. We need to look for multiple and interacting causes when studying migration and include climate change as one of the factors to be analysed.
For this sort of analysis, there is an urgent need to include climate change-related factors into future migration research agendas and survey questionnaires in the Indian context.
One preliminary way of understanding climate-induced migration is to analyse migration episodes where climatic events played an important role. Another way is to look at migratory patterns in regions identified at hotspots for climate change impacts.
|
|
(click the button above)
Ritayan Mukherjee documents the lives of 'maldhari' or nomadic pastoralists – who are worried about the growing scarcities in Kachchh district of Gujarat.
This article was originally published in the People's Archive of Rural India on March 31, 2017
|
|
|
|
The August 2018 Kerala Floods: Migration in and Migration out
Between August 8th and 20th 2018, the devastating floods in Kerala took the lives of 483 people, displaced over a million and directly affected over a sixth of the state's total population.
In Kerala, the flood disaster is likely to trigger even greater migration. In the case of emigrants, those who are already abroad would prolong their stay rather than return. The remittance usage pattern could change, as households may use a significant portion of remittances for reconstruction and repair of their houses damaged during the floods.
At the same time, there has been an exodus of out of state migrants in Kerala. Out of state migrants in Kerala suffered considerably as they lost dwellings, assets and wages for many days. There are also reports of them being discriminated in relief camps. Unlike the rest of Kerala, the migrant workforce had an added impediment: As the waters rose, they had little means to understand what is happening around, as many of them do not follow the local news media.
There is little understanding of the impact of migration on mitigating or coping with natural disasters in the context of India or Kerala. At this juncture, the vital questions are: how emigrants are going to respond to this disaster and whether the floods will induce further emigration or return migration? What role will domestic migrants play in the aftermath?
Given the importance of migration to Kerala, there is an urgent need to address the above questions so that Kerala can effectively rebuild itself.
|
|
|
Kerala, After the Flood: Migrants by Firstpost
|
|
Bangladesh-India: The Corridor of "Uncertainty"
Bangladesh is often seen as an ‘obvious example’ of mass displacement due to sea-level rise. Almost every year the people in Bangladesh face floods and cyclones that occasionally reach disastrous proportions. At the same time, slower processes like riverbank erosion, increasing soil salinity, and changing rainfall patterns challenge people’s adaptive capacities and impact the nation’s agricultural productivity and people’s own food security. In addition, for a large chunk of the population, the primary livelihood options are determined by environmental conditions and access to natural resources.
In this context, migration helps households to diversify risks to their livelihoods and to take on alternative pathways to their future. It is also important to consider that migration is only one of many strategies to cope with climate change.
India shares a 4,096 km land border with Bangladesh. Both the countries have shared a long history of cross-border movement since the very creation of the boundary in 1947. In the mainstream discussions of the Bangladesh - India corridor, migration is generally viewed as a negative outcome of climate change. Climate change-related migration is perceived as something that will adversely impact the economy and security of both India and Bangladesh.
In practice, varying migration strategies exist inside and beyond Bangladesh -- seasonal, temporary or permanent. Many people who lived off their land in the past have moved to cities within Bangladesh for gainful employment, while others have moved to more productive and safer rural areas to work as agricultural wage workers. Many families are now living `translocal lives´ so that they are able to cope with diverse shocks to their livelihoods.
The notion that adverse effects of climate change will result in the escalation of longer-term Bangladeshi immigration into India is not based on any scientific evidence. In fact, many Bangladeshis since the 80s have been migrating to the Gulf and other Arab and Southeast Asian countries as short-term international contract migrant workers (much like their Indian counterparts). It is important to keep in mind that long-term cross-border immigration is related to differential patterns of poverty, access to social networks, and household and community structures.
At a time when India is in the midst of a heated debate about cross-border migration from Bangladesh -- in the context of the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill 2016. The issue of climate migration becomes even more important. Instead of obsessing over the estimates of the number of climate migrants from Bangladesh, the need of the hour is a deeper understanding of the destinations selected by current environmental migrants, and to appreciate why immobility is as great a problem as movements to new locations.
Moreover, climate change-induced migration is not a one-way route from Bangladesh to India. In August 2017, when floods hit the densely populated Brahmaputra basin, both India and Bangladesh were severely affected. During these floods, 800 Indians from the state of West Bengal sought shelter in Lalmonirhat, a northern district of Bangladesh. In this sense, the governments of both India and Bangladesh are mutually dependent on each other for the protection of its peoples in the event of such disasters, especially in the bordering provinces.
|
|
|
If you have reached this far, chances are that you think migration matters.
Some recent IMN developments
- Our researchers Varun and Saniya recently put out a working paper on our India Migration Policy Index (IPEX)
In our initial evaluation of the policy frameworks in Kerala (KL), Delhi (DL) and Maharashtra (MH), Kerala was by far and away the most considerate of out of state migrants' integration.
|
|
|
|
IPEX 2018: FINAL RESULTS OF THE 3 STATE EVALUATION
|
|
We are actively seeking comments on the above study.
So write to us: hate mail, love mail, papers, research ideas, cool Twitter threads.... we're game for it all!
|
|
|
And finally, please please share this newsletter, let's get those "network effects" in action.
See you in November.
Cheers,
The IMN team
|
|
|
About India Migration Now
India Migration Now was founded in February 2018. We want to change the policy perspective that sees migration as something to limit and control into something which has to be harnessed and cultivated. An effective migration policy regime can become the most effective poverty-reducing program for the Indian government.
Ours is a geographically diverse team of collaborators (from 7 countries and 5 Indian states) consisting of researchers, entrepreneurs, teachers and people who really like data and policies. But we are bounded by a passion for India's development, deep allergy to bullshit and love for collaborative endeavours.
|
|
|
|
|
|
