Climate Change and Displacement: Multidisciplinary Perspectives

275 Pages·2010·1.568 MB·English

by  Jane McAdam

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CLIMATE CHANGE AND DISPLACEMENT
Environmental migration is not new. Nevertheless, the events and processes
accompanying global climate change threaten to increase human movement both
within states and across international borders. The Inter governmental Panel on
Climate Change has predicted an increased frequency and severity of climate
events such as storms, cyclones and hurricanes, as well as longer-term sea level rise
and desertification, which will impact upon people’s ability to survive in certain
parts of the world.
This book brings together a variety of disciplinary perspectives on the phenom-
enon of climate-induced displacement. With chapters by leading scholars in their
field, it collects in one place a rigorous, holistic analysis of the phenomenon, which
can better inform academic understanding and policy development alike.
Governments have not been prepared to take a leading role in developing
responses to the issue, in large part due to the absence of strong theoretical and
empirical frameworks from which sound policy can be constructed. The specialist
expertise of the authors in this book means that each chapter identifies key issues
that need to be considered in shaping domestic, regional and international
responses, including the complex causes of movement, the conceptualisation of
migration responses to climate change, the terminology that should be used to
describe those who move, and attitudes to migration that may affect decisions to
stay or leave. The book will help to facilitate the creation of principled, research-
based responses, and will establish climate-induced displacement as an important
aspect of both the climate change and global migration debates.
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Climate Change and
Displacement
Multidisciplinary Perspectives
Edited by Jane McAdam
OXFORD AND PORTLAND, OREGON
2010
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Published in the United Kingdom by Hart Publishing Ltd
16C Worcester Place, Oxford, OX1 2JW
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© The editors and contributors severally 2010
The editors and contributors have asserted their right under the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988, to be identified as the authors of this work.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,
or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of Hart Publishing,
or as expressly permitted by law or under the terms agreed with the appropriate reprographic rights
organisation. Enquiries concerning reproduction which may not be covered by the above should be
addressed to Hart Publishing Ltd at the address above.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Data Available
ISBN: 978-1-84946-038-5
Typeset by Hope Services, Abingdon
Printed and bound in Great Britain by
CPI Antony Rowe Ltd, Wiltshire
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The editor gratefully acknowledges the Australian Research Council for its finan-
cial support of this project, and the work of each of the contributors in compiling
their chapters for this book. She also expresses her sincere thanks to Dr Emily
Crawford and Trina Ng for their excellent research and editorial support; to col-
leagues at the Law Faculty, University of New South Wales and Lincoln College,
University of Oxford for their interest and encouragement; and to Hart Publishing
for their patience and professionalism. In particular, the editor wishes to thank
Tony Whincup for permission to use his photograph of people collecting wood on
the beach in Kiribati as the book’s cover image.
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CONTENTS
Acknowledgements v
Biographies ix
1. Introduction 1
Jane McAdam
2. Climate Change-Induced Mobility and the Existing Migration Regime
in Asia and the Pacific 9
Graeme Hugo
3. Migration as Adaptation: Opportunities and Limits 37
Jon Barnett and Michael Webber
4. Climate-Induced Community Relocation in the Pacific: The Meaning
and Importance of Land 57
John Campbell
5. Conceptualising Climate-Induced Displacement 81
Walter Kälin
6. ‘Disappearing States’, Statelessness and the Boundaries of International
Law 105
Jane McAdam
7. Protecting People Displaced by Climate Change: Some Conceptual
Challenges 131
Roger Zetter
8. International Ethical Responsibilities to ‘Climate Change Refugees’ 151
Peter Penz
9. Climate Migration and Climate Migrants: What Threat, Whose Security? 175
Lorraine Elliott
10. Climate-Related Displacement: Health Risks and Responses 191
Anthony J McMichael, Celia E McMichael, Helen L Berry and
Kathryn Bowen
11. Climate Change, Human Movement and the Promotion of Mental
Health: What Have We Learnt from Earlier Global Stressors? 221
Maryanne Loughry
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viii Contents
12. Afterword: What Now? Climate-Induced Displacement after
Copenhagen 239
Stephen Castles
Index 247
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BIOGRAPHIES
Jon Barnett is a Reader in the Department of Resource Management and
Geography at the University of Melbourne. He is a political geographer whose
research investigates the impacts of and responses to environmental change on
social systems. This includes research on climate change, environmental security,
water and food. He has been conducting research on the social and institutional
dimensions of vulnerability and adaptation to climate change since 2000. This has
included field-based research in the South Pacific, China and Timor-Leste.
Associate Professor Barnett is host convenor of the Australian research network on
the social, economic and institutional dimensions of climate change, which is part
of the National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility. He has published
three books and over 60 academic papers, and is on the editorial boards of Global
Environmental Change, Geography Compass and Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews:
Climate Change.
Helen Berry is Associate Professor and Deputy Director (Research), Centre for
Research and Action in Public Health at the University of Canberra. She also holds
adjunct appointments as Associate Professor at both the Australian National
University and the University of Newcastle, New South Wales. She is a psychiatric
epidemiologist (MA, BSc, BAppPsych, PhD) with a particular interest in investi-
gating the relationship between social capital and mental health, and their shared
associations with contemporary issues in health and well-being. Recently,
Associate Professor Berry has extended this work so as to place these research and
policy issues in the context of climate change, particularly its impacts in rural and
remote locations. Her work involves the use of advanced statistical modelling
techniques to analyse representative datasets and evaluate mental health interven-
tions. With a previous career in executive public and non-profit administration,
she has a particular interest in the way in which research and public policy-making
can work together. Associate Professor Berry leads collaborations on social capital,
mental health and climate change with Australian government agencies, state and
local government, and various universities, including in Vietnam.
Kathryn Bowenis a PhD candidate at the National Centre for Epidemiology and
Population Health at the Australian National University in Canberra. She is study-
ing the health risks of climate change and public health, with particular attention
to the needs and processes relating to adaptation. She has an honours degree in
psychology and an MSc in International Health. Since 2000, Kathryn has worked