Assessing
the Evidence: Environment, Climate Change and
Migration
in Bangladesh
Introduction:
In a nutshell
Migration means the movement of persons from one country or locality to
another. The movement of human has always got great importance to study for
socioeconomic purposes. That is the reason behind the establishment of International
Organization for Migration (IOM). From the beginning, IOM has been able to
contribute to the policy making of numerous national and international
organizations. As a part of their regular work they tried to find out the
evidence of reason and consequences of migration in Bangladesh, particularly
because of the Environment & Climate Change. Before, this matter was highly
neglected and was out of focus but recently the world has seen some of the devastating
impacts of climate change in migration and the matter have come to concern of
many global organizations.
Bangladesh's overall migration management policy
should be changed regarding to Risk Reduction and adaptation to environment and
climate change. They wanted to contribute on the policy making of various
government and non-governmental organizations on this issue. They started a
research program on the topic and also arranged a dialogue held on 23 May,
2010. The conference was participated by various national, bi- and multilateral
organizations, NGOs and research institutions. Experts exchanged their view to
this burning question of this changing world and also proposed a few measures
to be implemented depending on the report of IOM. According to the report
environmental migration is caused by two kinds of environmental changes i.e.
Sudden-onset events and slow-onset processes. These two processes are been
equally responsible for the environmental migration in Bangladesh. We need to
plan better policies to have a proper migration that would not cause further
environmental degradation and of-course implement that.
Environmental change and migration:
There has always been an inter dependency between the
migration and environment. Environmental change always caused human to find new
ways or ideas of life. If there is no other way people had to go for a new
place to adapt with where life would a little bit easier than the previous one.
The topic became visible to us from the Copenhagen summit held in 2009.
Migration is always been a multi causal occurrence. This is controlled by
social, economic, political and other factors. People decide to stay at a place
depending on available resources, social networks and the perceived
alternatives they have on the place. Environment is one of the dominating factors
of these factors of migration.
As the environment is the one among the
factors of migration, migration is not the only consequences of the
Environmental change. These two are highly dependent on each other but the only
cause or effect of them. There would be forced and voluntary environmental
migrations, but differentiation between this is too hard to do.
Extreme environmental events always caused human to
leave their place at least temporarily. If there the condition becomes
favorable they would go for rebuilding the previous one otherwise they have to
leave the place for ever. They may also raise some atmospheric or hydrological
nature, such as tropical storms or floods, with secondary impacts such as
landslides. These natural calamities cause human to leave their homes and go
for a safer place. But it’s not always co easy to do all at a sudden. If they
have no preparation they have to face the devastating effects of the climate.
They will loose everything they have for their livelihood and will have to
start a new life as a environmental migrant.
Global
data on people affected by disasters has improved considerably in recent
decades as it says in a report of Munich Re's National Hazards Assessment
Network (NatHan) over the last 30 years averaging more than 255 million people were
affected every year between 1994 and 2003, although the numbers of deaths are
decreasing. Developing countries suffer the worst as they don’t have adequate
resources to cope with. Although extreme environmental events can cause mass
displacement and can also affect the environment in places of destination. Particularly,
unmanaged urbanization or refugee camps and temporary shelters may produce
tension on the environment. In places this migration may cause land use
pressure and degrade local ecosystem.
Climate change and migration:
The
areas which are least responsible for climate change and least able to deal
with its effect are suffering the most. They are the developing countries where
the consequences will be most severe. But they have almost nothing to do.
Climate change is expected to raise global temperature that will cause for some
people of certain areas to leave the living place to survive. Areas those have
been identified as 'hotspots' where greater exposure and sensitivity to climate
change join with limited adaptive capacity suggesting that impacts will be most
significant to those areas.
These
changes are expected to affect the movement of people in at least four ways:
1) The
strengthening of natural disasters (both sudden and slow-onset) leading to bigger
displacement and migration,
2) The
unfavorable consequences of increased global warming, climate unevenness and of
other effects of climate change for livelihoods, public health, food security
and pure water accessibility,
3) Rising
sea levels that make coastal areas not fit to live in, and
4) Competition
over limited natural resources leading to growing tensions and even conflict among
the nations, in turn, displacement or Migration at a large scale resulting
refugees.
Now this
has been certain that climate change will lead to migration of people. We need
to find the areas with significant amount of human mobility because of this
particular reason. But we don’t have enough data to set our policies but this
should not be the purpose of inaction to this alarming problem. We should seek
to plan for environmental and climate related challenges in the future as mainstreaming
migration into development, climate change and environment policy to minimize
the risks and maximize the benefits of human mobility.
Critical Issues for Bangladesh:
The
percentage of people living in poverty in Bangladesh has declined from approximately
59 percent to 40 percent since the independence in 1971, while the population
growth rate has declined from 2.9 percent a year in 1974 to 1.4 percent in
2006. But still now we are not strong enough to protect ourselves from the
environmental calamities.
Still
now almost 75% of our total population lines in rural areas and most of them depend
on the Agriculture. Our agriculture based economy leads us to depend for the
climate mostly that defers us from the developed country as they have the
industries those are partly dependent on the nature.
The population
growth is still very high as we don’t have enough resource to feed our huge
population with the fundamental things, which has already exceeded the
deadline. Moreover when we have tried to improve our livelihood natural
disasters, environmental degradation and climate change been the restrictions
to the path. Then the people of the country not only have to cop with the
vulnerabilities present but also with the devastating effects that are caused
by the calamities. The most vulnerable peoples of the country are the flood
plain populations & highly sensitive coastal systems. These people they
have to migrate from their own place to the slums of major cities particularly
to Dhaka. The consequences of this kind of migration are ever more destructive
as we have little facilities to live in those. Last door that is closed for us
is that, we are treated as third world country and we are considered as too low
to be migrated to the developed nations.
Challenges that leads
to environmental and climatic Migrations:
Both gradual and
extreme environmental changes lead to the migration of the third world
countries like ours. These changes can be divided to sudden-onset events and slow-onset
processes, but most of the time we get a little chance to assure why the
migration is caused for.
Sudden-onset
events:
The sudden-onset events include
floods, Cyclones and storm surges, River Erosion etc. Flood has been a
part of our life in Bangladesh as almost one forth of the country face floods each
and every year. We have already copped with the effects and we also have
changed our farming method to reduce the bad effects. But in our country once
in few years is a cruel flood that we can’t bear. This kind of flood cause huge
displacement than any other natural event in Bangladesh. This is most obvious
in every year or a few years. Last severe flood of 2007 caused 32,000 Km² of inundation;
affected about 16 million people and 85,000 houses were severely damaged. Most
of the time, these people have no other way than migration. In a study among
four districts researchers found that almost 28 percent had at least one
migrant and 83 percent reported that joblessness due to regular floods was the
main motive for family members to migrate.
As Bangladesh is situated in such
a geographic condition every three years there is a huge Cyclone or a storm
surge. These affect the livelihood of the coastal areas and can even take
millions of lives. Tropical cyclones in 1970 and 1991 killed about 500,000 and
140,000 people respectively. But inn recent years we have done huge progress in
shelter and warning system that we are not loosing that much.
The coastal region in Bangladesh
will always be susceptible to the danger of cyclones and associated storm
surges and the threat of a raise in the severity of storms as a result of
climate change. But cyclones as Sidr and Aila, has shown, we have improved our ability
to mobilizing the immediate post-cyclone relief effort. In spite of this many
households remained displaced for months or even years, unable to return to
their villages.
The people
living in the Char’s and along the big rivers have always been in a treat of
erosion. In 2010 river bank erosion caused almost 15,000 people to displace
from their living place. The heavy monsoon rainfall cause huge erosion of the
big rivers and also the damage of the houses and the agriculture. A study
proved that people of the erosion zone try to resettle themselves as much as 4
times, and then they migrate for lifetime.
Slow-onset
processes:
In spite of some similarities there
is also distinguishable dissimilarities between the coastal and river erosion.
It depends on the nature of tidal forces and the river behavior at the coast.
Coastal erosion can be both a slow and a sudden event. Climate change is likely
to worsen coastal erosion primarily through rising sea-levels, but also through
changes to river flow and other hydrological dynamics.
Some assessment Report predicts that
there will be a total increase of between 26 and 59cm by the end of the 21
Century (or between 20 and 43cm on the mid-range). We need not to say that
these will caused by the global worming that is consequence of environment and
climate change. The process are slow but steady and alarming us of the effects
that has already been seen by some of the countries. It is estimated that an
increase of 1 meter of the sea level will can be the cause of 17.5 percent loss
of total existing lands of the country. Bangladesh's NAPA and Climate Change
Strategy and Action Plan recommend a range of actions including communications
improvements, coastal forestation, employment adaptation and increased
investment in disaster management by community participation.
In south-west of Bangladesh
salt-water intrusion has shown its potential by reducing crop production.
Ground water of those areas has already been problematic and need to go 250m
deep for fresh water. As a result of sea level rise and very much dry in winter
the problem is being more dramatic and reducing the accessibility of freshwater
in the coastal areas.
Rising temperatures, changing
rainfall patterns and drought are also the consequences of climate change
slowly but they have shocking effects.
“Cascade effects” of the Change in
Environment and climate:
Cascade effect of this kind of slow
processes or sudden events of environment and climate change may cause environmental
degradation, urbanization, human security problems and international migration
to the place where they move. It is highly visible when a sudden event makes
people to settle in a higher or comparatively safer place. In case of slow
processes this doesn’t happen all in a sudden but has steady effects.
As nations develop economically,
their urban areas grow in size and economic importance. But in Bangladesh the
population growth is more severe as of 2.42 in urban areas having 1.42 in
total. Moreover the environmental migrates comes to the urban areas to settle
not by the pull factor but the push factor that is of the environmental
degradation. Most of the slum dwellers of Dhaka are from the cyclone affected
districts as Barisal, Khulna etc.
Environmental degradation right
after a major sudden event is never negligible. The people of those areas don’t
have enough supply of food & water. Moreover the sanitation system is
completely ruined as they are poor enough to have a permanent sanitation
system.
A study proved that after ‘Aila’
almost 15 families are using the same toilet. In case of urban slums the effect
is more shocking as they have 2-3 toilets in the whole slum of 1000 people on
an average.
Human security is a major concern
as the affected people have nothing to feed themselves. In the shelters of
migrates for short or long time there is no available access of food and water.
There is always a conflict among them and they also fight for the fundamental
things. They also need protection from harassment, trafficking or other
negative dimensions of insecurity as some negative powers been always active on
those circumstances. After the flood disasters of 1991, the death rate for
women aged 20-44 was 71 per 1,000 as women face particular danger of physical
and sexual harassment
International migration has never
been so easy regarding the environmental degradation. The population leaving
environmental degraded areas seems to cause environmental damage in the areas
they enter. Along with that the developed countries are very much strict to
adapt the environmental migrants as they are from third world countries like
Bangladesh. Migrations may be of short and long distance. Long distance
migration to Middle-East countries always been fruitful to Bangladesh as they
earn revenue for the country. A study suggests that long-distance international
migration is reduced in the immediate consequences of major environmental
events where resources are at their most stretched.
On this note skilled international
migration may be a great remedy to the problem.
Conclusion:
Based on the evidence discussed above we may
come to conclude with some policies for the policy makers that may help to
improve the situation. As the Poverty reduction and the migration are
interrelated interns of Bangladesh, the govt. should emphasize on the fact to
introduce more skilled migrants that the developed countries would love to
have. Both NAPA and CCSAP should design for self assessment first then to
negotiate with the rest of the world for long distance and productive migration
to play a key role. More research is needed for self assessment and research
priorities should be given on minimizing forced migration, protecting the
displaced, supporting migration as adaptation for internal and international
migrants. They also should emphasize on afterwards environmental degradation
and supporting cyclone affected communities and preventing trafficking of the
affected community. Last of all country should try to minimize the risk and
maximize profit towards a tactical approach to environment, climate change and
migration with the limited resource. Migration can help to decrease risk to
lives, livelihoods and ecosystems and also contribute to income diversification
and improve overall ability of households and communities to cope with the unfavorable
effects of environmental degradation and change.
