The consequences

Environmental change affects mostly poor people that live in agricultural communities, especially the ones that have the minimum amount of essential resources available and therefore have to leave their household (Piguet, Pécoud, & de Guchteneire, 2011). Moreover, it all depends on the “level of vulnerability”, which is focused on the economic aspect (people are very dependent on the environment to have an income) and other social factors that could intensify the environmental impact even more. Therefore people will migrate because they cannot react or adapt to the environmental change, as argued by Piguet, Pécoud and de Guchterneire (2011, p. 8). Henceforth, “the consequences of climate change […] vary according to the context, as the same environmental factor will have different kinds of impact based on the characteristics of the people it affects” (Piguet, Pécoud, & de Guchteneire, 2011, p. 14).

Homer-Dixon (1999) agrees and argues that environmental change develops “environmental scarcity, [which] contributes to the social breakdown” and increases the potential for a violent conflict mostly in developing countries with fragile economic and political institutions (Homer- Dixon, 1999, p. 4). There are three causes of environmental scarcity: increased consumption and population growth, depletion and degradation of renewables and unequal access to resources (Homer-Dixon, 1999). He observes five possible general categories of violent conflict that affect developing countries as a result of environmental scarcity:

1. Disputes that are caused by “local environmental degradation”. For example, as a result of a dam construction.

2. “Ethnic clashes arising from population migration and deepened social cleavages due to environmental scarcity” (Homer-Dixon, 1999, p. 5).

3. “Civil strife” (e.g. coup d’état) triggered by environmental scarcity that impacts the economic production and persons livelihoods. In addition, in these situations the national governments often do not adapt or assist these persons to improve their social and economic condition.

4. “Scarcity-induced interstate war” (e.g. conflict over water).

5. “North-South conflicts”, which are conflicts between developed and developing states based on how much effort they put in their adaption, recompense and reduction for international environmental problems (e.g. global warming) (Homer-Dixon, 1999, p. 5).

Homer-Dixon (1999) points out that the second and the third category of conflict are the conflicts that will occur the most within the next decades (Homer-Dixon, 1999). This is due to

the fact that, “in the next decades, as scarcities rapidly worsen in many parts of the world” (e.g. water, fish) and national governments do not promote or assist in the adaptation regarding the impact of environmental change (Homer-Dixon, 1994, p. 39). Consequently, nation states that are suffering from on-going internal conflicts due to environmental stress will almost certainly become more fragmented or have develop in an authoritarian regime. Fragmented nation states will cause mass cross-border migration flows. In addition, “they will be unable to effectively negotiate or implement international agreements on security, trade and environmental protection” (Homer-Dixon, 1994, p. 40). Authoritarian regimes are focused to remain popular among their supporters and often promote attacks against other nation states to distract their supporters from the internal pressures, which eventually can affect the global security (Homer- Dixon, 1994).

Burrows and Kinney (2016) have also researched the linkage between “climate change, migration and the increased risk of conflict” (Burrows & Kinney, 2016, p. 1). However, the they argue that it is still a complex problem that remains a “considerable uncertainty,” because there are multiple variables that lead to conflict and migration, as previously mentioned (Burrows & Kinney, 2016, p. 1). Nevertheless, the media and policy-makers have acknowledged that climate (change) can become a new (global) security concern. Therefore, Burrows and Kinney (2016) have developed a Table 8 (see next page), based on literature from multiple case studies from 2000-2014. The case studies have revealed that slow-onset or sudden-onset climate events can trigger migration and often conflict (six of the nine case studies resulted in conflict) (Burrows & Kinney, 2016).

Another important case that is not included in this table is the war in Darfur, the western province of Sudan (The Economist, 2010) According to the former UN secretary-general Ban Ki-Moon referred as being “an ecological crisis, arising at least in prom climate change” (Ki- moon, B., 2007). In the beginning of the 1970, sudden rainfall fell shorty, which was one third of the annual average. After that, Darfur was confronted and suffered from continuous droughts, which caused displacement of their citizens from small villages to cities and even cross border displacement. Approximately three decades later, the continuous years of drought, political, economic and ethnic developed in a violent conflict in 2003. The most interesting aspect in this case is that the conflict only occurred in Darfur, because although “the sharp drop in rainfall” also have hit other countries on the African continent, it did not evolve in a conflict (The Economist, 2010). According to McAdam (2014) these cases as described above can be

conceptualised as “crisis migration”, which refers to human “mobility in situations of crisis […] as a response to complex combination of social political, economic and environmental factors, which may be triggered by and extreme event, but not caused by it” (McAdam, 2014, pp. 30- 36).

Table 8. Variety of case studies on climate change impact/events, migration and conflict, conducted by different authors

Type of climate change event

Regimes/ country

Time period Major impacts on migration

Presence of conflict

Drought/soil degradation

Kenya 2004 and 2007 Decreasing soil quality has increased labour migration

Not applicable

Heat stress Pakistan 1991 - 2012 Have increased long- term migration of men

Not applicable

Forest fires United States 2010 Have increased the intention to migrate

Not applicable

Flooding and cyclones Bangladesh 2009 Have increased in male rural-urban migration

Moderate evidence of contributing to intra- familial conflict

Flooding Pakistan 2011-2012 Have increased in male

rural-urban migration

Strong evidence of violent conflict over political power between migrants and non- migrants

Drought Syria 2006-2014 Have increased in male

rural-urban migration

Moderate evidence of contributing to violent conflict

Drought and water scarcity

Western Sahel 2005-present Have increased in labour-related migration of pastoralists

Strong evidence of contributing clashes between pastoralists and farmers over resources

Drought Peru and

Bolivia

1996-present Have increased the labour-related migration of farmers due to severe droughts

Strong evidence of contributing to conflict between farmers over resources and ethnic conflicts between farmers and indigenous migrants

Desertification Nigeria 1993-present Have increased the labour-related migration of farmers due to on- going desertification

Strong evidence of ethnic conflict between farmers over rangeland

Source: (Burrows & Kinney, 2016, p. 2)

This section will focus on the Pacific Islands. The Pacific Islands are sea-locked and fragmented nations that “have limited access to world markets, suffer from challenges of smallness, […] geographical isolation, […] and heavily reliant on foreign aid for their development”, as argued by the World Bank (2009, pp. 1-2). Roberts (2010) states that the Pacific Islands are both economically vulnerable and also more vulnerable to impacts of environmental change compared to other countries. Therefore it is important that these islands have the ability of

adapting to environmental change (e.g. coastal erosion), because the combination of fragile economy and impact of climate change have evolved significant increase environmental- induced migration towards surrounding countries (Roberts, 2010). However, according to Montreux and Barnett (2009) it is the international community responsibility to reduce the “emission of greenhouse gases […] in order to reduce the magnitude of the adaptation task” and the environmental change effects (e.g. sea level rise) (Mortreux & Barnett, 2009, p. 106). The international community is responsible to financially support the Pacific Islands to improve the effectiveness of the adaptation strategies. Mortreux and Barnett (2009) further argue that mass environmentally induced migration flows needs to be avoided, because they often violate human rights. Moreover, most of the inhabitants see migration as “the last option, and recognised the sacrifices it would entail [because] to get a property and relocate would be to lose our sovereign right and our identity” (Mortreux & Barnett, 2009, p. 111).

The environmental impact can also intensifies “the risk of becoming stateless”, especially amongst migrants and stateless persons (Connell, 2015, p. 46). Connell (2015) further argue that in the aftermath of a disaster, national governments do not take stateless persons into account in their adaption strategies and in their efforts to support local communities in the aftermath. However, “there is no substantial research currently underway that links environmental processes and statelessness, with the exception of work relating to climate change and the disappearance of low-lying island states”, as claimed by Connell (2015, p. 47). McAdam (2012) calls this the “disappearing States or sinking states phenomenon [exist of evident] predictions” wherein entire nation states will be submersed and will eventually raise legal issues (McAdam, 2012, p. 119). These disappearing states will predominately occur in the Pacific region, where populations from small-islands (e.g. Tuvalu) are affected by environmental change, obliging them to leave or flee their country because of a constant threat to their existence by their State, eventually making them stateless (UNHCR, 2009). However, according to Bodansky, Brunnée and Rajmani (2017), these sinking or disappearing islands raise “complex legal and technical questions and strains against the traditional boundaries of international law” (Bodansky, Brunnée, & Rajamani, 2017, pp. 321-322). They further claim that the international treaties relating to statelessness (1954 Convention Relating to the Status of Stateless Persons and the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness) are inadequate to utilize or to recognise the populations on the sinking islands. This is due to the fact that both treaties are not “universally ratified, so their provisions only bind only a subset of states” (Bodansky, Brunnée, & Rajamani, 2017, p. 322). Moreover, the treaties were developed to

address situations of individuals that became stateless as a result of “conflict of laws or as a consequence of state succession” and are therefore not applicable to individuals whose country of origin has disappeared (Bodansky, Brunnée, & Rajamani, 2017, p. 322). The Environmental Justice Foundation (hereafter EJF) agrees and adds that the main problem is that these treaties are both based on the rejection of nationality through the procedures of national laws of a particular (nation) state, but not on climate change affecting state and statehood (EJF, 2014)

According to the UNHCR (2009) there is another problem that makes it difficult to recognise statelessness among this group of people pointing out that there no universal legal definition “of what constitutes a state, there is an agreement in the existing doctrine that there must be territory inhabited by a permanent population under the control of an effective government” with the interdependence of statehood (UNHCR, 2009, p. 1). Nevertheless, environmental change will have an impact on statehood, because these sinking islands are expected to be “entirely uninhabitable long before their full submersion”, which will result in that also governments become cross-border displaced (UNHCR, 2009, p. 2). Their displacement will be permanent, except when the host country gives up a part of their territory. This will result in a displaced population and the government will be completely dependent on the host-state, which raises questions regarding the independence of the displaced government, its statehood and sovereignty. In addition, if a state’s existence comes to an end, the citizenship within a particular state would cease permanently, which means that a person can no longer be a national or obtain nationality of that particular state, therefore becoming stateless (UNHCR, 2009). Furthermore, the 1954 Convention “only extended to stateless persons who are refugees”, but most of the stateless persons are not per se refugees, as argued by UNHCR Senior legal advisor Mr. Massey (2010, p. i). In addition, another problem with both Conventions is that there are two forms of statelessness:de jure stateless (refugees that do not have a nationality for example born stateless) and de facto stateless (refugees that do have a nationality but cannot obtain them due to conflict of laws or state succession) (Massey, 2010).

Subparagraph conclusion

Henceforth, as claimed by the EJF, “persons rendered stateless by extreme climate change impacts constitute one of the clearest examples of a legal and policy void across international frameworks” (EJF, 2014, p. 10). However, states could provide assistance and protection by using various strategies as described in the following paragraph 3.3.